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Health Care Organizing Project

Securing Access to Quality Health Care for All Through our Health Care Organizing Project

In 1997, Ocean State Action created the Health Care Organizing Project (HCOP), a coalition of twenty-seven consumer, health-care provider, labor and advocacy organizations fighting for access to high quality, affordable health care. Click here to view members.

By creating a diverse table for action, the Health Care Organizing Project (HCOP) builds connections and relationships between organizations, finds new allies and promotes a stronger vision for health care in Rhode Island. Our organizations represent all people affected by the health care system: families, businesses, patients, workers and providers. We are the health care community of Rhode Island.

Since its inception, the HCOP has improved the daily lives of thousands of Rhode Islanders by winning expanded access to RIte Care, protecting mental health services, making presription drugs more affordable, and creating the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner. HCOP continues to protect public programs and look for innovative solutions to our health care "non-system."

2007

RIte Care

A primary aim of OSA work on health care is to restore the cuts to RIte Care. Last legislative sesssion, the General Assembly and the Governor approved a few different cuts to the RIte Care program. Specifically:

• Hundreds of children who arrive in RI this year will no longer be eligible to receive RIte Care. This includes childrenwith many types of immigration status. Essentially, the Assembly ended the program for state-added children, moving forward.
• 1,800 parents of under 5 year LPR children may lose their elgibility because of a regulatory change just implemented at the Department of Health.

At the federal level, the Deficit Reduction Act imposed documentation regulations will make it harder fpr citizen children to produce documents that will allow them to enroll in RIte Care.

We are supporting, through grassroots advocacy and lobbying, bills H5412 (Rep. Diaz) and S415 (Sen. Pichardo), which would restore eligibility to children and parents, as well as provide relief for children while they seek proper documentation.

Coordinated Health Planning Act of 2007

In 2006, as an outgrowth of our "A Lively Experiment" convening of health care leaders in Rhode Island, OSA wrote and helped to introduce legislation to establish the Office of Health Care planning. The simple description of planning is "making current decisions in light of their future effects." Health planning refers to a process that determines the criteria for making health care investment decisions, with the aim of achieving a more efficient, responsive health care system.

The Assembly passed a modified version of the legislation, directing the Department of Health to convene an advisory committee and prepare a report by April 1 on the ways in which RI could implement a health planning process. OSA staff have been intimately involved in the process.

In 2007, we have reintroduced, with our Sponsors Sen. Chuck Levesque and Rep. Elaine Coderre, the Coordinated Health Planning Act of 2007. This legislation reflects the discussion held at the advisory council, and presents a strong system under which health care planning could occur. The act flew through the House and the Senate with broad support only to be vetoed by the Governor, despite the support of his own administrative appointees and a rigorous months-long process to develop this important health care proposal.

To take ACTION, contact Victoria Picinich at 401-463-5368, ext. 340.

Members: