Winning Health Care for All

Paula Hall is a Washington State child care provider who lost her house and her daughter’s college savings to pay for the treatment she needed to save her life and rehabilitate her husband after a near fatal work accident.

Samara Knight is a nursing assistant at an Ohio nursing home. She cares for residents who can’t care for themselves all day long but she can’t afford health care for her own family.

Every family in every region of the country is affected by America’s health care crisis. And as both health care workers and health care consumers, SEIU members have a unique stake in solving the crisis—we see sicker patients and crowded emergency rooms at work and face skyrocketing health care costs at home.

That’s why SEIU members and health care voters are mobilizing in record numbers to ensure 2008 is the year we elect leaders who will guarantee access to affordable health care their top priority.

• SEIU members invited all the presidential candidates to participate in the first issue forum of the 2008 election year and Senators Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Obama, Governor Richardson, and Representative Kucinich attended. 
• SEIU members challenged every presidential candidate to release a plan to provide affordable health care to all Americans and Senators Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Obama, Governor Richardson, and Representative Kucinich responded.
• Three of the six presidential candidates walked a day in the shoes of health care workers.
• Americans for Health Care distributed health care comparisons of all the Democratic and Republican candidates to thousands of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada voters.
• Health care voters and SEIU members attended Republican and Democratic candidate events to ask candidates their plans to ensure health care for all.
• Health care voters and SEIU members mobilized thousands of their friends, neighbors, and family members in the early primaries and caucuses to vote for candidates who will make health care reform a top priority.
• SEIU members are standing with Barack Obama because they know he is the only candidate who can unite all Americans to pass health care for everyone. From Pennsylvania to Oregon, we’ve launched an aggressive effort to ensure he’s elected.

How does America’s health care crisis affect your family? Click here to share your story.