Health Care for America Now (HCAN) believes that everyone, no matter where they live, what they look like or how much money they have should have guaranteed access to quality, affordable healthcare–including reproductive health care–they can count on.
Our organization brings together national and state grassroots organizations to fight for quality, affordable healthcare for everyone in America, to protect Medicare, Medicaid and the social safety net, and to make the rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes so we can reinvest in healthcare and economic opportunity.
HCAN has led the fight to pass, defend and implement the landmark Affordable Care Act (ACA) for over a decade. The law currently provides coverage to over 35 million Americans. Over the last decade, it has reduced the number of uninsured people in the United States to historically low rates, stopped insurance companies from discriminating against over 100 million people with pre-existing conditions and created new, fairer rules, for private insurance providers. Thanks to the ACA, insurance companies can no longer charge women more for insurance than men, deny people coverage for basic services like mental health, addiction, or pediatric care or place arbitrary caps on care or coverage. The ACA reduced health disparities for Black and Brown Americans by ensuring millions more people of color could access affordable coverage through private insurance and Medicaid for the first time.
But we didn’t stop there. HCAN, working with state groups across the nation, helped build on the success of the Affordable Care Act through our work on the American Rescue Plan Act, which reduced the cost of healthcare and expanded Medicaid services and coverage during the COVID pandemic. And, as a founding partner of Lower Drug Prices Now (LDPN), we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which created historic improvements to Medicare that will lower drug prices for millions of seniors and people with disabilities.
HCAN believes that good health and access to quality coverage are lynchpins to economic security. These factors create the opportunity for families to thrive in our country and to eradicate the systemic economic, racial and gender inequities that help the richest people in the nation prosper while squashing opportunity and fairness for the rest of us. In addition to advocating for quality, affordable healthcare for all we support:
- Making the ultra-rich and billionaire corporations pay their fair share of taxes. Our two-tiered tax system drains money from our economy so that billionaires and big corporations can keep getting big tax breaks and hoard their wealth rather than supporting fair opportunity for everyone. The richest people in our country pay lower tax rates on their increased wealth than teachers and firefighters pay on their earned incomes, and billionaires spend their massive wealth to drown out voters’ voices so they can keep getting richer by buying influence in Congress and state legislatures.
- Protecting and expanding Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and our social safety net. Congress should protect and expand earned benefits so that families have real security to depend on in hard times. We believe that workers should retire with dignity, everyone should have enough to eat, our streets should be safe and people should have access health care they need to take care of themselves and their families.
- Restoring reproductive freedom and guaranteeing access to abortion. The decision to start a family is the most consequential health and economic choice that most people will make in their lifetime. Everyone should have the right to make that personal decision without fear of punishment or stigma. Denying people access to abortion has lifelong negative impact on their health, well-being, and families. Lawmakers must ensure everyone has the freedom to decide for themselves if and when they will have children and the means to access the care they need to end a pregnancy, continue a pregnancy or prevent a pregnancy.
