WASHINGTON — The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Council of La Raza announced Monday they are working together, and with other civil rights advocacy organizations, to promote equality and anti-discrimination clauses in proposed health care reform legislation.
Group leaders have four points they want to see addressed: a public option, tangible steps to eliminate racial and financial disparities, complete access to health care for all Americans, and measures that will increase the cost effectiveness of doctor visits, said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, speaks out on the importance of considering minority needs in health care reform legislation. (Michelle Minkoff/MNS)
Benjamin Todd Jealous, the NAACP president, said the campaign developed by the coalition is more direct than past efforts by the separate groups.
“Our campaign is more pointed to remind senators that we are here now, and we will be here next fall,” he said.
Community leaders said they have been closely monitoring the health care reform debate for years, but feel their message isn’t being heard. Their respective groups said they are concerned that their rights be represented in the bill that emerges from the Senate health and finance committees, and that care not be denied based on someone’s racial, economic or legal status.
“Access to quality and affordable health care is a human and civil right,” said Henderson. “When receiving health care is able to bankrupt a family, there can be no economic justice,” he said, recalling the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s adage that health care is a “fundamental right, not a privilege.”
Janet Murguía, La Raza president, said she’s concerned that anti-immigrant sentiment is expanding to prejudice against Latinos in general, as well as creating more stringent requirements for those who will receive care under the new plan.
She also said discrimination might be introduced in the Senate Finance Committee’s proposal in a clause where a child with only one citizen parent would be treated as “a fraction of a citizen,”
Murguía compared this plan to the Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787, when slaves were only given three-fifths of a complete vote for close to a century.
“It’s a sad commentary on our nation that such proposals would be considered seriously,” she said.
The television, print and online ad campaign encourages Hispanics, African-Americans and other minorities to talk to their representatives to ensure they have access to health care they can afford.
Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana – states that have been identified as swing states for minority representation in health care reform – will be targeted in the campaign’s first phase.
Jealous said that the organizations’ concerns are not just about minority rights, but the rights of all Americans. “When we win, everybody wins,” he said.