We celebrated the release of one of our members from Lancaster County Prison, birthdays, and the growing poverty abolitionist movement rising in South Central Pennsylvania!
We sang movement songs, made buttons and more Nonviolent Medicaid Army flags together and shared testimonies!
We moved forward with next steps in the development of our Project’s of Survival modern day Underground Railroad organizing work for our human rights!
Our organizations are a part of the National Nonviolent Medicaid Army and we have been fighting against Medicaid cuts since 2023 when the Biden Administration purged 25 million people!
We need YOU to help us Organize to Protect and Expand Medicaid! Send us a DM and join us for our Medicaid Cuts Organizing Drive!
Put People First! PA welcomes the passage of HB 1460 from committee in the PA House, a bill which takes a step toward more accountability for Wall Street private equity firms that run our hospitals into the ground, then close them and put our families’ lives at risk.
The closure of the Crozer Chester system is devastating for Southeast PA communities. Sadly, the Southeast region is not unique. Private equity, nonprofit and for-profit owners closed 26 hospitals in all regions of PA in just the last five years.
It’s a positive sign that lawmakers from both parties are beginning to agree with our calls for accountability for non-profits like UPMC and Geisinger as well as for-profits and private equity.
HB 1460 extends the existing powers of the Attorney General, and we agree that more is needed. A Public Heathcare Advocate would represent the interests of the people of Pennsylvania in our life and death struggle with the healthcare industry. We’re tired of getting sick while they get rich!
We are building a mass movement to keep our hospitals open and put healthcare into the hands of workers and communities, instead of lining the pockets of Wall Street. Our 5 healthcare rights committees are active in more than 40 PA counties. Change comes from below, not above! Join Put People First! PA today.
Click here to sign up for Put People First! PA’s Enews or go here to see regional facebook pages and local contacts.
On Saturday, May 10th, the Southeast PA (SEPA) Healthcare Rights Committee members gathered bright and early for our monthly basebuilding event at a local leader Robin’s beloved food bank in Phoenixville, PA.
At the event, Put People First! PA members listened to people share their healthcare stories and talked about the dire effects of hospital closures – Crozer Health AND the ER & acute care closing at nearby Suburban Hospital Community Hospital. Members also offered blood pressure screenings and support with state benefit sign ups and Medicaid cut off appeals.
Robin reflected after the basebuilding, “We shouldn’t even have to have food banks. The safety net is not working! There’s profit in keeping us poor. There’s profit in keeping us sick. As much as I love the food bank, I wish I didn’t have to go. I wish I wasn’t food insecure. I wish my neighbors didn’t have to go. Through doing this work with Put People First! PA, I’m grateful I can see the bigger picture and open my mind more and more. We met amazing people.”
Another member, Legs, shared on their experience basebuilding for the first time. Legs said, “There was a line for the foodbank and then a second line for additional services. Our members talked with people in pairs to connect with people there. It was a really great opportunity even though it was so early!”
Raphie, another member who lives in Phoenixville, expressed, “Everyone seemed to believe health care was a human right, that the rich are hoarding wealth to spend on unnecessary things while the poor suffer, and that neither party was actually solving any of our real problems with healthcare. Even someone I talked to who was a Republican was on the same page. It’s heartening to know that a lot of people are on this track of thinking that will lead to change.”
On April 24th, 2025, Put People First! PA joined with the Philadelphia Unemployment Project for an action outside of the Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol to call attention to the Medicaid Cuts. Lower Bucks Hospital is in dire financial straits. The action named “Medicaid Cuts = Hospital Closures.” Southeast PA Healthcare Rights Committee leader, Anita spoke at the rally and joined with this messaging and pushed it further to declare, “Medicaid cuts = Death!” Watch the video below or linked here.
Hello, my name is Anita, and I’m the regional coordinator of Southeast PA with Put People First! PA. We are a state-wide, member-led, staff-free organization of poor and working people coming together to organize for our vision of healthcare as a human right since 2012. We are organizing the millions on or unfairly excluded from Medicaid, in urban and rural areas, across all the lines used to divide us: race, gender, party, and more. Our organization seeks to answer the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s call at the end of his life for a non-violent army of the poor and dispossessed of this nation.
Thanks to Ron for inviting us to this event here today. We recognize the devastation which is coming for us. Medicaid is vital to poor and working people, and any attack on Medicaid is an attack on our class. Medicaid Cuts equals Death! We need to recognize that the attacks to Medicaid today are the result of attacks yesterday. Under our former president, with a bipartisan mandate, starting in April 2023, 25 million people across the nation were cut from Medicaid in a historically unprecedented purge. 1 in 12 Pennsylvanians lost their healthcare, most lost it due to clerical error, and half of those who lost Medicaid were children. Put People First was there, helping people file their appeals to keep their Medicaid, gathering people’s stories to share and show we are not alone in our healthcare crises.
We know there will be worse coming as this war on the poor continues. Medicaid Cuts equals Death, and not just for those directly enrolled. These cuts will harm hospitals like this one behind me, potentially bankrupting and resulting in the closure of those deemed ‘unprofitable’. Put People First has been fighting hospital closures across the state, from the current closure of the Crozer system in Delco and hospitals in Scranton and Potter County, as well as the closures of Hahnemann in Philly and St Joes in Lancaster. These hospitals were vital to us, but not profitable to their owners. Hospital closures are a loss to the whole community, and will only get worse as Medicaid is attacked. What will your communities look like without a working hospital? This is why we say Medicaid Cuts = Death.
That ought to make you angry that our system is set up that we can lose our hospitals, our healthcare, our lives with little recourse. The Reverend Doctor King said “The dispossessed of this nation … live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against the injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life…” There are now 140 million people in this country living in poverty, 800 dying everyday of poverty. If you can recognize that Medicaid Cuts equals Death, you must recognize how serious this is. The time is at hand for us – the everyday Poor & Dispossessed – to build this new and unsettling force.
