Healthcare Rights Committees bring demands leading up to the Sept Day of Action

As Put People First! PA (PPF-PA) builds towards the Nonviolent Medicaid Army’s National Day of Action for Medicaid in early September, community members are making demands. PPF-PA is planning three actions all at shuttered hospitals. On Saturday, September 6th actions in Southwest PA at Heritage Valley Health System and in Northeast PA at Berwick Hospital, and on Monday, September 8th in Southeast PA at Crozer-Chester Medical Center.

These demands come out of conversations with people from base-building across the state over the summer and they dovetail into our fight for a Public Healthcare Advocate. As people sign the petition, we also asked:

• How are you or your family affected by the healthcare crisis?
• What do you need in your local healthcare system?

We ask you to share this, too!

Petition Private equity, nonprofit and for-profit owners closed 26 hospitals throughout Pennsylvania in just the last 5 years. This is a healthcare emergency that affects all of us, our families and neighbors, especially in poor and working class communities. Since 2022, we’ve experienced mass Medicaid cut offs and we know more are coming that will lead to unnecessary death through both individual denials of care and more hospital closures.

Put People First! PA calls on Governor Shapiro and the office of the Attorney General to:

1. Enact eminent domain to seize closed hospitals across Pennsylvania
2. Support counties in reopening closed hospitals as public hospitals
3. Support a statewide Public Healthcare Advocate, housed in the Attorney General’s office, that would fight for the rights of everyday people in the healthcare system, NOT Wall Street profiteers

We’ve heard our elected officials tell us they care, while nothing changes time and time again. As Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr said, we need organized poor people power “to make the powers that be say yes, when they are desirous to say no.”

Contact a Healthcare Rights Committee Coordinator to sign this petition to support these demands or if you are part of a local organization or congregation and want to co-sponsor this petition.