Cover the Uninsured

Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare (GVMH) supports the American Hospital Association and numerous other partners as an advocate for the seventh annual Cover the Uninsured Week, which will take place March 22-28, 2009.
GVMH will be handing out bookmarks and stickers to promote this nationwide observance. 

Forty-six million Americans are uninsured. Nine million of them are children. More than eight out of 10 are in working families. They are our friends, neighbors and colleagues--forced to gamble every day that they won't get sick or injured.
Living without health insurance is a risk no one should have to take.

As the economy worsens and more and more American's lose their jobs, the number of uninsured is expected to soar. It seems clear that fixing the health care system is a vital step toward strengthening the economy.

The longer we wait, the worse it will get, because health care costs keep rising and more people are becoming uninsured. Too many businesses are forced to choose between providing coverage and creating jobs, and families are forced to spend more of their incomes on health insurance.

Cover the Uninsured, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national effort to highlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and demand solutions from our nation's leaders.
Reaching the goal of affordable and stable health care will require changes in public policy. Through Cover the Uninsured, work is being done, to build and sustain broad-based support for change.

This includes raising awareness and building support among policy-makers, health care professionals, grassroots advocates, faith leaders, the business community and active citizens through Cover the Uninsured Week and reaching out to enroll eligible uninsured families in public health coverage programs during the annual Back-to-School Campaign.

Thanks in large part to thousands of individuals and organizations working in their communities, concern about access to affordable health coverage is high among American voters. Last session, Congress demonstrated unprecedented bipartisan support for an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover more of America's kids. Broad-based coalitions from across the country and our nation's governors have joined together in the fight.

2009 is the year to build upon this momentum to increase awareness about the issue, amplify diverse voices on behalf of the uninsured, and demand solutions from our nation's leaders. To learn more about Cover the Uninsured, Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare encourages you to go to www.covertheuninsured.org