Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network

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Click here for printable U2k Endorsement form.

The following text comes from the national UHCAN web site:

The Universal Health Care 2000 Campaign

The First Step to Solve America's Health Care Crisis

What will it take for the United States to establish a health care system that provides comprehensive, quality and affordable health care to all?

The health care system is admittedly very complex. It is one-seventh of the economy and directly or indirectly affects the lives of every person in this country. But the first step towards the goal is not that complicated. Using the American political decision-making system of elections and legislation, the American people have to declare they must have universal, comprehensive, quality care. The U2K Campaign is a call to make the need for universal health care a central part of the 2000 elections and to use the 2000 elections to move America towards achieving universal health care.


The U2K Campaign,
Because America's Health Care System Is Not Working

Over the last ten years, America's health care crisis has deepened. The number of uninsured has risen to nearly one-sixth of the population, over 44 million people. For tens of millions more, needed care is unaffordable or unavailable. The restrictions of managed care are increasingly distressing health care professionals and the general public. Health care spending is once again rising more rapidly. Even Medicare, America's most important and most successful health insurance program, is being threatened. In summary, America's health care costs too much, covers too little, and excludes too many. And these problems are getting worse.


The U2K Campaign,
Because 2000 Can Be a Time for Big Political Decisions

Since the demise of national health reform in 1994, politicians have taken up only piecemeal reform measures. Even when legislation did pass, it actually assisted but a small fraction of those it promised to help. Most candidates are still timidly proposing more of the same in the early stages of the 2000 campaign, refusing to deal with the basic problems of the health care system. While politicians remain cautious, organizations that represent tens of millions of Americans, including millions who work in the health care community, are taking strong public stands about the need for America's political system to tackle universal health care. The Universal Health Care 2000 Campaign focuses this growing sentiment on the 2000 elections as the logical place to start a multi-year campaign. A strong U2K campaign will accomplish three objectives. It will:

  • Increase the political visibility of fundamental health care reform
    nationwide.
  • Strengthen local health care coalitions and create new linkages with
    organizations concerned about America's health care crisis.
  • Help create an energized bloc of universal health care supporters in the
    next Congress.

Health Care Justice: The Time Is Now
What is the U2K Campaign?

This Campaign provides a format by which hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of advocates can join hands to influence the thinking of candidates and opinion leaders about the need for universal health care. It encourages delegations of diverse constituencies - faith communities, labor, the health care community, patient advocacy groups, supporters of justice - to make regular contact with candidates. It provides materials to educate organizations and politicians.

The opponents of fundamental health care reform have great wealth, which they use to influence American politics. A serious universal health care campaign demands the unity of the broadest spectrum of advocates. We encourage organizations that agree with this approach to endorse the U2K Campaign Statement.


U2K CAMPAIGN PLEDGE

We believe that:

  • everybody needs access to comprehensive quality health care;
  • health care is a basic human need and a basic human right;
  • the 1990s, market-based solution to America's health care problems is
    failing and the crisis is getting worse;
  • it is a moral outrage and a national disgrace for the United States to be
    the only long standing democracy to enter the next century without a
    national guarantee of health care for all its people.

We commit our organizations to:

  • use the 2000 elections as the beginning of a sustained effort to ensure
    comprehensive, quality, affordable health care for all;
  • work with other groups and associations towards this end.

We call on all candidates running for office in 2000
to commit themselves
to making universal health care a top priority
in the next legislative session.