Health Care For All

The widespread failure of the private sector to provide essential services for working families means that the time is increasingly ripe for a national health care reform movement. We have a real opportunity; developing community campaigns to support health care worker organizing; opposing hospital mergers and closings; organizing municipal and statewide efforts to make prescription drugs affordable; opposing Medicare and Medicaid cuts; and working to reform HMO?s.

While we stress the need for concrete victories that make a real difference in working families? access to affordable quality healthcare, we recognize we cannot win comprehensive healthcare workplace by workplace and therefore we need a broader campaign to win Healthcare For All. JWJ local coalitions are linking on-going work with broader healthcare demands that have potential for meaningful healthcare reform.

In fall 2008, the Southeast Michigan chapter of Jobs with Justice created a Health Care Action Committee (HCAC) to fight on behalf of anyone whose private insurance company has denied them treatment. With legal assistance from the Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center in Detroit and in conjunction with the denied person, the HCAC assesses each situation to determine the proper course of action to pressure the insurance company to do the right thing from a simple phone call to the proper party to mobilizing labor-community support and public mass action. In September 2010, Michigan is set to launch a high-risk health insurance pool (broken link) for people who haven't been able to get coverage.

If you have been denied health care for any reason, please contact Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice?s Health Care Action Committee at 313-961-0800, ext. 235.

The HCAC also helps to build the movement for universal health care by working with HealthCare Now!, which advocates for replacing private insurance with a single-payer health care system and with Health Care for America Now, which advocates for a public option to the current employer-based private insurance system. JWJ's HCAC works with the AFL-CIO Health Care Committee to defend and improve the current health care reform. If reform is to succeed, progressives will have to fight for a stronger government role, including a public option. Anyone who would like to join the HCAC should contact Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice at 313-961-0800, Ext. 235 or email the committee at jwjsem@gmail.org.

On July 21, 2010, 30 single-payer, public option and other health care reform activists came together around a meeting called by Jobs with Justice and the AFL-CIO Health Care Committee.

For almost three hours, we discussed the content of the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. After discussing what's in the bill and getting our questions answered quite well by HCAN's John Freeman and MichUHCAN's Marjorie Mitchell, everyone agreed they wanted to keep in touch and be kept up-to-date regarding the current struggle to defend health care reform and the ongoing struggle to improve it.


Subsequently, meeting organizers started a periodic emailing service for health care activists. It's simple: activists send us news, actions and announcements, we compile them and then we send them back out to all of you in easy-to-read packages, but not too much or too often. You can read past emailings below.


If you would like to receive Health Care Emailings from Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice, please email us at jwjsem@gmail.org

  • Health Care Emailing #1, #2, #3, #4 (broken links)

Click here to see all of top Republican PR consultant Frank Luntz's Top 10 Talking Points for opposing health care reform.

Below, we are providing talking points and ideas you can use to argue against the right wing propaganda you will be hearing from the media and politicians and echoed by your friends, co-workers, fellow worshipers and family members.

If you come across some other good arguments, facts and talking points, please send them to us at jwjsem@gmail.com. We will be glad to share them with our readers on this page.


  • HCAN commends state regulators for taking a step toward holding health insurers accountable (Archive link)
  • Kaiser Foundation Survey Says Americans Support Health Care Law, 50%-35% - (Archive link)
  • Click here for Sara Robinson's "How Universal Health Care Changes Everything." (Archive link)
  • HCAN Commends State Regulators for Taking a Step Toward Holding Health Insurers Accountable (Archive link)
  • Michigan prepares to launch high-risk health insurance pool (broken link http://www.macombdaily.com/articles/2010/08/29/news/srv0000009220980.txt )
  • The Republican Plan to Dismantle Health Care Reform (Archive link)
  • GOP divided on how to replace health overhaul law (Archive link)