IHM: MI Health Care

Michigan Health Care Security Campaign

The IHM Leadership Council recently endorsed the Michigan Health Care Security Campaign supporting a 2008 ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to require the legislature to enact laws that would provide affordable health care for all Michigan citizens.

Michigan spends a lot on health care-about $6,000 per-person per-year. And yet health care costs continue to rise every year. Each year more residents drop their health insurance because they can't afford it and more businesses drop health coverage for their employees because they cannot remain competitive and pay high health insurance costs. More than one million Michigan citizens have no health insurance at all. Hundreds of thousands more lack enough health coverage to care for serious illness or injury. Hospital emergency rooms are being overwhelmed with patients who cannot get routine and preventative medical care because they cannot afford it. This causes needless worry, pain and suffering to Michigan families.

Washington continues to ignore this problem at the federal level, thereby compelling action at the state level. Massachusetts enacted health care reform in 2006 after voters signed petitions that required their Legislature to act. The goal in Michigan is to organize a similar campaign that will require our state Legislature to address the problem.

A group of health care, labor, civil rights, and religious organizations is working to collect 475,000 signatures by July 7, 2008 in an effort to get a proposal to amend the state constitution on the November 2008 ballot. If passed, the constitutional amendment would require the Legislature to come up with a solution for the state's 1.1 million uninsured residents and to address the spiraling costs of health care. The language of the amendment reads:

"The State Legislature shall pass laws to make sure that every Michigan resident has affordable and comprehensive health care coverage through a fair and cost effective financing system. The legislature is required to pass a plan that, through public or private measures, controls health care costs and provides for medically necessary preventive, primary, acute and chronic health care needs."

The campaign has been endorsed by a number of organizations and individuals including M.O.S.E.S, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, AARP of Michigan and Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

At the November, 2007 Coordinating Council, IHM Associate, Moni McIntyre gave a presentation on health care ethics and distributed literature highlighting the need for a just health care system in the United States. Ann Nett, IHM gave presentation on the Michigan Health Care Ballot initiative. Health care justice is emerging as a topic of concern for many in the IHM community.

In the IHM Constitutions (Article 13) the IHM community committed itself to, " &be conscious of the poverty, hunger and injustice suffered by the great majority of the human family and to make choices that clearly reflect that, with Mary of the Magnificat, we stand with and for the poor." The Michigan Health Care Security Campaign was endorsed with this commitment in mind.