We’re celebrating our 25th anniversary on Thursday evening, December 6th, and we want all our friends and colleagues “in the house” with us!  Our fete will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at District Council 1707 AFSCME, located in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan, just west of the Theater District.

 Our 25th Anniversary and 2018 Health Care Justice Leadership Annual Gala will feature some inspiring speakers looking back over 2018 and forward to 2019, and we’ll be saluting some worthy groups and individuals for their health care justice leadership.

Our distinguished honorees include:

— Mary Bassett, MD, MPH, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for her political and governmental leadership.  During her tenure, Dr. Bassett prioritized advancing health equity across all neighborhoods in our city, and revolutionized the Department’s entire approach to public health by focusing on the social and economic determinants of health for low-income and immigrant communities.

 — Lourdes Rodriguez-Dox, Director of the Retirees Division of 1199SEIU United Health Care Workers East for her trade union leadership.  She has helped lead the union’s retirees for over 3 decades, and involved them in many advocacy campaigns in support of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, children’s health care, and the Affordable Care Act.  In addition, she has been a leader in the New York City Chapter of the New York State Alliance for Retired Americans.  ARA is the national retiree program of the AFL-CIO.

         

— Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Actors Fund for their community service leadership partnership.  These two entertainment industry non-profits have collaborated over the years to provide specialized health care and health insurance services to our city’s entertainment community workers.  Most recently, they opened a new community health center in the Theater District.

— Coverage for All, a statewide campaign for immigrants rights and access to health care, for their community organizing leadership.  The campaign is a project of Health Care for All New York, and is co-led by the New York Immigration Coalition and Make the Road New York.  Since it’s founding in 2015, it has led efforts to protect and expand health insurance programs for immigrant New Yorkers.

Our keynote speaker will be Margarida Jorge, Co-Executive Director of Health Care for America Now, and veteran of the Jobs with Justice movement and the Service Employees International Union.  HCAN was formed in 2008 as a national community-labor umbrella campaign out-in-the-states to fight for comprehensive health care reform proposals in Congress, and was instrumental in passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Starting in 2017, HCAN led successful efforts to build and manifest grassroots support for the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, community health centers, reproductive rights, and related social programs such as SNAP/Food Stamps. 

We’re counting on all our individual supporters and union and community partners to support our 25th Anniversary Annual Gala by joining the Host Committee, placing announcements in the commemorative journal, and reserving blocks of tickets. Please contact us for information about these options.

Individuals and groups/unions can make your contributions here:

— $75 and $100 for individuals (suggested donation)

— $250 for a small group/union Host Committee membership, or a quarter-page journal announcements (includes 2 tickets)

— $325 for a group of 5 tickets

— $500 for medium-size group/union Host Committee membership, or a half-page journal announcement (includes 4 tickets)

— $650 for a group of 10 tickets

–$750 for a large group/union Host Committee membership, or a full-page journal announcement (includes 6 tickets)

— $1,000 for a special page journal announcement (includes 8 tickets)

— $1,250 and $1,500 for special packages of a Host Committee membership, journal announcement and/or group of tickets.

— If you’re an individual with limited resources, we welcome whatever you can contribute. No one will be turned away.

You can use our fundraiser page here to make an online contribution, use the donate button here on our website, or send a check to: Metro New York Health Care for All, 420 West 45th Street, DC 1707 AFSCME, New York, NY 10036.  f you can’t join us at our Gala, we’ll miss you, but welcome your financial support regardless.

Your generous a contribution will enable us to “keep on, keeping on” even better next year. With our new Congress and State Legislature, and the groundswell of grassroots support emerging for universal health care, we’re very excited about the possibilities!

 

It’s a new day for health care politics and policy, and more generally our fundamental democracy, across our state and nation in the wake of yesterday’s midterm elections. There is now a check on unlimited one-party power in Washington, and immediate threats to existing health care programs are not very likely for the foreseeable future. We now have a chance to improve and build on them instead, and not just defend them.  That said, we will also have to keep our eye on moves by the Trump administration to undermine the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and consumer protections (such as pre-existing condition coverage, and 10 Essential Health Benefits), and it’s efforts to limit reproductive rights, and to transform Medicaid into a welfare-style program.

Nationally, three “red” states voted to expand their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act:  Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska.  In addition, changes in state goverment leadership in several other states will likely lead them to expand Medicaid too:  Wisconsin, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada and Maine …and possibly Georgia.

Turning to New York State, there’s a dramatic shift in the balance of power in the Legislature, particularly in the Senate. This new politcal landscape will provide new opportunities for our state to continue our long tradition as a “leader state” on health care, and build on our succeses.

Here in NYC, we have a new member of Congress for Staten Island and southwest Brooklyn. The victor, Max Rose, has a background in running a network of community health centers that specialize in addiction treatment, so he knows and understands health care issues. We welcome him to our city’s congressional delegation, all of whom are strong champions for health care.

Even given all this good news, we still have much work ahead to bring true universal health care to our city, state, and nation. We look forward to working with all of our coalition partners in that endeavor and all struggles for health care justice.

Finally, we thank and salute everyone who participated in our “Vote for Health Care!” project which worked to elevate the health care issue for the public and voters.  Joining with our partners in the NY-11 for Health Care coalition, we distributed approximately 5,500 non-partisan, issue-focused leaflets about what was at stake for health care in the elections.  We centered our efforts in the 11th Congressional District, the only one in NYC with a contested race.  We focused on outreach at transit hubs, community events, churches, social service program sites, community health centers, and public housing campuses.  We also held a Community Town Hall on Staten Island to present speakers on health care topics relevant to the elections, hear from residents about their own health care concerns and experiences, and answer questions.