NAACP CALLS ON CONGRESS TO ACT SWIFTLY TO REPAIR AND IMPROVE BROKEN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

NAACP DISPELS DECEPTIVE AND MISLEADING MYTHS AROUND HEALTH CARE REFORM WHILE SUPPORTING A STRONG PUBLIC OPTION

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THE ISSUE:
Americans today are too often struggling and straining under the burden of three related trends: shrinking health care coverage, rising health care costs or no health care insurance at all. Over the last decade, millions of Americans have found themselves uninsured, and millions more have become underinsured as the value of their coverage has declined. In the years 2008 – 2010, it is estimated that approximately 6,000 people a day, or almost 7 million Americans total, will lose their health insurance. Today, more than 46 million Americans do not have any health care insurance at all. At the same time, health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs have risen steadily, and the number of families who are facing unmanageably high health care costs continues to grow. In fact, nearly one in four non-elderly Americans are in families that will spend more than 10% of their pre-tax dollars on health care in 2009, and the vast majority of them (more than 82%) have health care insurance. Furthermore, in the United States today the color of your skin, your ethnic background and where you live can not only influence your health care access and quality; they can determine them. And while medical science has made a lot of advances over the last 10 years, the gains made by the discovery of new drugs and treatments have not passed on to all segments of our population.

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