^{Posted on November 29, 2005}

The Latino Health Insurance Crisis: A Forgotten Community

Latinos for National Health Insurance
A Coalition for Equality in Healthcare
63 East 9 Street, Suite 11k
New York, NY 10003
917-304-6886
Email LatinoHealth@msn.com

Estimados Amigos,

We are very glad to tell you that our campaign is moving forward. First, please note our new dedicated email address for our coalition LatinoHealth@msn.com ; and we just secured our soon to be constructed website www.LatinosNHI.org.

Last week we wrote to all the members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, thanking those who are sponsoring HR 676 “A National Health Insurance Plan”, and encouraging the rest to support this legislation. They were very impressed by the number of Latino leaders, doctors, organizations in our coalition who want a single payer healthcare system, and we just learned that Congresswoman Napolitano and Congressman Bacerra became co-sponsors of HR 676. We are working with other national organizations to have at least 100 members of Congress be co-sponsors by the next summer.

You should know that the number of articles nation-wide asking for real healthcare reform is very encouraging. Economist Paul Krugman continues his valuable columns advocating government-sponsor healthcare system:

“The fact is that the free market doesn’t work for health insurance, and never did. All we ever had was a patchwork, semiprivate system supported by large government subsidies.

That system is now failing. And a rigid belief that markets are always superior to government programs - a belief that ignores basic economics as well as experience - stands in the way of rational thinking about what should replace it.” [November 14, 2005]

And for the first time the NY Times endorsed in their editorial page what they called “the crying need for national health insurance.” [October 17].

Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers union, wrote an editorial titled: Rx for America: a national health plan.” And Michigan’s governor Jennifer Granholm said that “that some form of a national health care program…could be” the solution for the “employee health-care insurance premiums that are eating many industries alive.” [Kalamazoo Gazette, October 28, 2005]

As you can seen the need for national health insurance is now back in the radar screen, and more needed than ever.

We want to invite you to the Congressional Briefing that we helped organized that will take place in Capitol Hill on December 14.

We’ll keep you informed!

Dr. Jaime R. Torres, National Coordinator

Join Us For A Luncheon Briefing

“The Latino Health Insurance Crisis: A Forgotten Community”