Health Care for All

There’s a lot at stake this year, and the opponents of health care reform are working overtime to impede our progress.

Our leaders need to hear, loud and clear — there’s work to do in 2012:

• We need a public or nonprofit health care option to give us alternatives to the private companies that control insurance.  The SustiNet Healthcare Cabinet is developing these alternatives and will submit a plan by October 2012.  With your participation we CAN: get the SustiNet Cabinet to create a solid plan for a Public Option for Connecticut in 2012 -and- get Gov. Malloy to pledge his support for this plan.

• Connecticut can use federal funds in 2014 to provide quality, affordable care to families who need help getting coverage by setting up a Basic Health Program. Legislators should vote in 2012 to support this to bring in new health care dollars and help 80-90,000 people in 2014. With your participation we CAN: achieve a vital State Basic Health Program that offers the broadest coverage at no cost.

• Too many people and small businesses have no coverage or pay too much for lousy coverage.  The new Health Insurance Exchange, charged with opening access to coverage in 2014, is making key decisions in 2012.  A law must be passed now to add consumers and small businesses to the Exchange Board and prohibit powerful vested interests from controlling key decisions. With your participation we CAN:make sure the Exchange Board enacts the most consumer-friendly, cost-controlling, health-enhancing insurance Exchange possible in 2014.

Find out more about what’s at stake in this crucial make-or-break year for health reform: www.healthcareforevery1.org/sustinet

As part of our contribution to the healthcare4every1 campaign, over 600 Connecticut clergy signed the Health Care for All Statement below. To see a list of signatories, click here.

“Health Care is a Human Right. Health Care is a Divine Right.”

We raise our voices in support of a health care system that leaves no one out. God has created all of us and calls on us to care for each other. Caring for each other expresses our love for God. The existing gross inequality in the health status of people, especially as it pertains to ethnicity and race, is unacceptable – morally as well as politically, socially and economically. God invites us to bring justice to all people. God’s consistent concern for healing challenges us to pursue affordable and quality health care for all people.

We raise our voices in support of health care that is affordable for everyone, especially the poor. Each day in our congregations and organizations, we witness the consequences of our increasingly inaccessible health care system. People with health coverage are less and less able to afford health care, because of co-pays, premiums, deductibles and exemptions. And those without health coverage and who can least afford it, often pay the most for health care, either because they delay seeking treatment until their problems are more serious, or because they are charged higher prices than patients with insurance, or because they incur interest as they pay their bills over time. Some are forced to choose between food and medication. We call for a comprehensive solution that puts health care within reach for everyone.

We raise our voices in support of health care that sustains our society. We believe that universal access to health care is more affordable for society as a whole. Equal access lowers administrative costs, enables public health approaches, enables better preventive care and reduces the need for more expensive rescue care.

We raise our voices in support of health care that enhances people’s lives by enabling them to live with dignity and to reach their full potential. Health care and healing are concrete manifestations of God’s ongoing care for all creation. Attending to the physical needs of our people by implementing a comprehensive health care system, including dental and mental health care, compliments our work of attending to the spiritual needs of our people. To be a truly moral society, the benefits of our scientifically advanced health care system must be shared universally.