Labor Union Blog

Several thousand union members and community, health and faith activists as well as small business owners from up and down the East Coast are traveling to the nation’s capitol June 25 to tell Congress to pass real health care reform that works for real people.

Sponsored by Health Care for America Now! the mid-day Capitol Hill rally will be followed by lobbying visits and several town hall meetings in what organizers say will be the largest health care lobbying day ever held. The U.S. House and Senate will be debating health care reform proposals in committee and final bills are expected to be up for votes on the floor in July. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

Health care costs are crushing families, businesses and government at all levels. We cannot cover everyone without bringing down costs and we cannot control costs without getting everyone into the system.

President Obama and many congressional Democrats are backing health care reform that brings down costs, provides quality care for all and includes a public health insurance plan option, among other key principles. (Click here for more.) Says Sweeney:

We will create a uniquely American solution that fosters choice, competition and opportunity for all Americans to choose the health care that works for them.

But the insurance industry and big pharmaceutical companies are desperately trying to weaken health care reform and protect their soaring profits and near monopoly control of the health care market. Already, extreme conservative groups with big budgets are engaged in a multimillion-dollar scare campaign to derail real reform.

The June 25 rally is our chance to fight back and demonstrate the powerful grassroots support for the president’s health care reform drive. The AFL-CIO’s recently completed 2009 Health Care for America Survey shows how strongly working families believe we need health care reform. More than 25,000 people took the online survey and more than 6,000 told their personal health care stories. The message: It’s way past time to fix the nation’s broken health care system.

Visit www.HealthCare09.org to sign up and for more information. As Obama says:

Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.