Those of us who represent personal injury clients and Social Security disability claimants have to see every day the problems caused by lack of health insurance. Regardless of your politics, no one can argue that our country wouldn’t be better off if everyone had some type of health insurance.
One Web site that has this goal in mind is CoverTheUninsured. Here is the mission statement from the site:
The Situation
Forty-six million Americans are uninsured. Nine million of them are children. More than eight out of 10 are in working families. They are our friends, neighbors and colleagues–forced to gamble every day that they won’t get sick or injured.
Living without health insurance is a risk no one should have to take.
The Response
Cover the Uninsured, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national effort to highlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and to demand solutions from our nation’s leaders.
We know that reaching the goal of affordable and stable health care will require changes in public policy. Through Cover the Uninsured, we are working to build and sustain broad-based support for change.
This includes raising awareness and building support among policy-makers, health care professionals, grassroots advocates, faith leaders, the business community and active citizens through Cover the Uninsured Week and reaching out to enroll eligible uninsured families in public health coverage programs during the annual Back-to-School Campaign.
And our work is making a difference.
Thanks in large part to thousands of individuals and organizations working in their communities, concern about access to affordable health coverage is high among American voters. Last year, Congress demonstrated unprecedented bipartisan support for an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover more of America’s kids. Broad-based coalitions from across the country and our nation’s governors have joined together in the fight.
The time for change is now.
2008 is the year for you to build upon this momentum to increase awareness about the issue, amplify diverse voices on behalf of the uninsured, and demand solutions from our nation’s leaders.
