Monday, April 2, 2007
In this Washington CAN! e-newsletter, you will find:
- Secure Health Insurance Partnership Would Help Small Business
1. Insurance Industry Blocking Health Care Reform
The insurance industry
is obstructing health care reform.
They want to amend
SB 5930 to
1) gut standards for the quality of health care coverage, and 2) discriminate
in price, hurting those who are older, sick and most in need of
care.
Take action now to stop them.
Visit http://action.washingtoncan.org to
email your legislators today, or call 1-800-562-6000.
Message: "Please do not vote for any amendments to SB 5930 that
weaken standards for quality coverage or allow insurance price
discrimination." (If you're a small business owner, let your legislator
know!)
Insurance lobbyists and
their allies say small businesses want greater choice of limited benefit plans.
Small business owners tell a different story.
A recent Washington
CAN! survey of 388 small business owners in the
Small businesses know
that quality counts.
Don’t let the insurance
industry stand in the way of health care reform.
Take action today. Visit http://action.washingtoncan.org
to email your legislators, or call 1-800-562-6000.
Message: "Please do not vote for any amendments to SB 5930 that weaken standards for quality coverage or allow insurance price discrimination." (If you're a small business owner, let your legislator know!)
On Thursday, March
22nd, The Olympian published an opinion piece by Linda Davis and Gene Otto,
Olympia members of the Small Business for Secure Health Care Coalition
organized by Washington CAN. Linda and her husband Kent own Law Firm
Technology Specialists. Gene owns the San Francisco Street Bakery.
Read it here: Secure Health
Insurance Partnership Would Help Small Business. Here's an
excerpt.
...Ours is the only
health care system in the developed world that values money over our own
personal health. We’ve allowed profit-driven insurance companies to
“cherry-pick” the healthy and exclude people and treatments that are
expensive. We end up paying twice as much for less health care than the
rest of the industrialized world enjoys, leaving less money to spend on
schools, roads, and our families.
We need effective
government intervention to reverse this downward spiral and put us back on the
right track.
As in past years,
there are significant obstacles. The insurance industry and their allies
are dragging their feet. They say that small business owners are content
and individuals better off to let insurance companies solve health insurance
cost and access problems by offering marginally cheaper health plans with
stripped down benefits.
Let’s see, more
plans, paying for less coverage - sounds familiar. Whose interests are
they protecting? Not the health care consumer – you and me. What
small business owners and our employees want is what we all want – access to quality
coverage at a price we can afford.
With
over 30,000 members across the state, Washington CAN! is the
state’s largest grassroots community organization. Washington CAN! fights
for progressive social change at the local, state, and national levels, with a
focus on issues that most directly affect the lives of Washington residents.
Our mission is to achieve economic fairness in order to establish a democratic
society characterized by racial and social justice, with respect for diversity,
and a decent quality of life for those who reside in Washington State. www.WashingtonCAN.org
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