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Sign-on letter

Posted by: Julia Eisman on Nov 21, 2008

This week, we sent letters to President-elect Obama and key Congressional leaders, asking them to make health reform a top priority.  The letters were signed by 100 national groups, and organized by Families USA, SEIU, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and the Catholic Health Association of the United States.

The letter to President-Elect Obama is below:

Dear President-Elect Obama:

Our nation is in a period of unprecedented economic uncertainty, and the current financial crisis threatens to depress economic growth for a prolonged period of time and lead to hardship for families and businesses, while government budgets will be under stress. The new President must get our economy back on track and that depends on addressing health care.

We, a diverse group of organizations representing tens of millions of Americans, urge you to include meaningful health care reform as one of your first domestic priorities, and we stand ready to support you in national reform efforts to address our health care crisis. We respectfully request that you begin the urgent national conversation on health care immediately by convening a health care "summit" that brings experts, leaders, advocates, and patients together to set an ambitious agenda for our nation's health and health care.

We cannot afford to delay identifying and implementing solutions to the disturbing health care trends that undermine the economic security of our families, limit the productivity of our workforce, inhibit job creation and wage growth, and threaten to crowd out investments in energy, education, and infrastructure.    

Those trends are well known to most Americans. Between 2000 and 2007, family premiums for employer-provided coverage rose 5.4 times faster than median worker earnings. Year after year, health care costs grow at a rate that outpaces our overall economic and wage growth. Health care expenses drive families into debt; nearly half of foreclosures were caused at least in part by a medical problem. Families forgo necessary care and jeopardize the health and productivity of the next generation of American students and workers. Each year we spend more on health care, yet our spending is not improving the health status of millions of Americans. 

Over the last 20 years, whether the economy was growing or contracting, the number of Americans without health insurance continued to climb. The undersigned organizations share a common understanding that expanded coverage is an integral component of a comprehensive solution to contain health care costs and improve health outcomes.

We stand ready to support you in a national conversation to fix health care, to focus on prevention and chronic care, to give patients more tools to manage their health, to give all Americans meaningful coverage, and build a more sustainable health care system that consistently delivers value to all of us, and that strengthens us as a nation. We pledge our support for such a conversation as well as an early effort to secure meaningful health care reform.