The ITUP Spotlight on Health Reform

Below is a letter that we recently developed and distributed to our California Congressional leadership, representing a unified voice of diverse groups from around the state. We urge our readers to continue to express your support and concerns with the health reform legislation to your local representatives, for sustained advocacy is a necessity now more than ever.

You can also have the chance to sign on to the letter below at our 14th annual Conference in Sacramento next Wednesday, February 10th. If you haven't yet registered please do so NOW as the deadline for online registration is today!

February 1, 2010

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Congressman Henry Waxman
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Congressman George Miller
2205 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Congressman Pete Stark
239 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Senator Barbara Boxer
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Senator Dianne Feinstein
331 Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Speaker Pelosi, Senators Boxer and Feinstein, and Congressmen Miller, Stark, and Waxman:


You have brought us so close to comprehensive federal reform of our fractured health care system. We urge your continued support of the original legislative goal to create a system built on the pluralistic strengths of our existing system while assuring quality, affordable care for all Americans.

The social and economic toll of failure to enact reform cannot be understated. Employer-sponsored insurance will continue to degrade, paralleling the increases in health care costs and premiums. The number of uninsured will continue to rise, and the amount of uncompensated care and medical bankruptcies will multiply. These effects will disproportionately burden California, the epicenter of the nation's uninsured population. Small business, the driver of our state's job creation, will continue to face unaffordable growth in premiums and hundreds of thousands of individuals will continue to suffer exclusions from coverage in the medically underwritten individual market. The failure to enact federal reform will have adverse consequences on our state's public coverage programs that are already threatened by proposed budget cuts to millions of beneficiaries including low-income children, their working parents, the elderly, the disabled.

The bills are not perfect, additional compromises will be necessary to draw more unified support. However, we encourage you to bring the first stage of reform to fruition. We thank you for your continuing efforts to cover the uninsured, and urge you to finish the job.



Sincerely,

Lucien Wulsin
Insure the Uninsured Project

John Arensmeyer
Small Business Majority

E. Richard Brown
UCLA School of Public Health

Leona Butler
Retired CEO, Santa Clara Family Health Plan

Carmela Castellano
California Primary Care Association

Michael Cousineau
USC Center for Community Health Studies

Joel Diringer
Diringer & Associates

Hector Flores
Family Care Specialists Medical Corps

Peter Harbage
Harbage Consulting

Scott Hauge
Small Business California

Howard Kahn
LA Care Health Plan

Wendy Lazarus
The Children’s Partnership

John Ramey
Local Health Plans of California

Gloria Rodriguez
Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County

Sergio Sanchez
SEIU

Walter Zelman
CSU Los Angeles


*Affiliations listed for identification and do not necessarily
represent that of the accompanying organizations*