I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.
How many times have you said or thought that? Plenty, I’ll bet. If you are like ACORN member Tamecka Pierce from Florida who suffers from lupus and serious gaps in her health care coverage, it’s a regular thing.
If you are like the ACORN members I speak with regularly, the mother who worries about her son’s asthma medicine, the partners who worry if their uninsured husbands get injured on the job, the families who face discrimination in the ambulances on the way to the hospital where a lack of insurance can take us 20 minutes farther away to a hospital that will provide care, then you know.
You are also sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Well, you aren’t alone.
Faced with a generational opportunity to fix America’s broken health care system thousands of people are joining together with Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and gathering today, June 25th, in Washington, DC. We are union leaders, healthcare workers, moms and dads, faith leaders, students, advocates, and over 900 ACORN members from around the country all coming together in the largest healthcare rally in American history! We are calling on Congress to pass a quality, affordable healthcare bill.
The sick and tired are going to halls of the well-insured and well-cared-for and telling them that now is the time to reform our healthcare system and provide quality, affordable healthcare to all Americans.
Today we are sending one clear message to our elected officials in Washington: We’ve fought too hard, come too far, and have waited too long for Congress to do too little. This fight is about quality care that people can afford, and that means a package of comprehensive benefits that gives all of us the care we need. We won’t settle for anything less.
We know the enemies of health care reform are working hard to defeat any meaningful reform. And they are being sneaky. They have to be because 72% of Americans support the centerpiece of health care reform: the Public Health Insurance Plan, the so-called “public option”. Opponents of reform say things like, “It’s too expensive.” “Now isn’t the time.” Or they rally behind the idea of buyer co-ops or state-by-state solutions. My friends, these are all stalling tactics aimed at derailing the centerpiece of any meaningful reform. Simply put, we need a robust public health insurance option and Congress needs to make it happen right now.
Because not only are we sick and tired of being sick and tired, we’re sick and tired of excuses, we’re sick and tired of delay, and we’re sick and tired of false solutions. The time is now, the momentum is with us. Now its time for us to fight and win.