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RHODE ISLANDERS HIGHLIGHT IMMEDIATE IMPACT OF HEALTH REFORM, THANK CONGRESSMEN FOR THEIR EFFORTS AS CHAMPIONS
Speakers highlight how many individual Rhode Islanders will benefit immediately or in the next six months from national reform
PROVIDENCE - Health Care for America Now, AARP, Organizing for America, many other allied groups and individual Rhode Islanders came together at a press conference today at the Rhode Island State House to thank Congressmen Patrick Kennedy and Jim Langevin for being leaders in the fight for comprehensive health care reform. Reps. Kennedy and Langevin fought for Rhode Island’s working families and small businesses and put their constituents’ needs ahead of the insurance companies and special interests.
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Ocean State Action on Governor's Tax Policy Commission recommendations:
We need tax fairness for middle and low-income Rhode Islanders, not more cuts for big corporations
PROVIDENCE - Peter Asen, Associate Director of Ocean State Action, released the following statement today in response to the business tax recommendations of the Governor's Tax Policy Commission:
Why would the Governor's tax policy commission want to provide $38.8 million in tax giveaways to 50 of the largest corporations that do business in Rhode Island? At a time when taxes have already been shifted too far away from large corporations and onto middle class families, and when Rhode Island faces a serious budget deficit, this proposal to eliminate the corporate income tax is both deeply unfair and totally irresponsible. The largest corporations in America have received enough bailouts at the expense of low- and middle-income families.
Under this proposal, the fifty corporations with the highest taxable income would see a windfall of nearly $40 million dollars in tax cuts, or more than three quarters of a million per corporation. Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of corporations would receive a symbolic tax cut of $50.
And yet the proposal lacks accountability and does not require corporations receiving breaks to prove it would actually create jobs. Over the past several years, Rhode Island has made huge tax breaks to the state's wealthiest and to corporations claiming they would create jobs, but all those cuts have been utter failures in achieving this goal. Unemployment in Rhode Island rose faster last year than in any other state in the country.
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Rhode Islanders Say NO to Foreclosure Evictions
International Human Rights Day Event takes place during a National Week of Action for a People's Economic Recovery Package
Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2008
On Wednesday, December 10 at 5:15pm outside of 804 Potters Avenue in Providence, tenants and homeowners affected by the foreclosure crisis will be joined by organizations across the state in a press conference and blockade warning. The event is taking place at the location of a three-family house which has been foreclosed upon.
Tenants in the house have received letters from a real estate agency and a law office representing the bank that currently owns the house, notifying them that they are being asked to vacate the premises. Pedro Rodriguez and Pedro Alba, two tenants in the house, explain, "Many tenants across Rhode Island are being forced out of their homes as a result of post-foreclosure evictions. We do not want this to happen to us. We are paying tenants and have no intention of moving."
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For Immediate Release (  hcan_insurance_event_release_8.13.08.pdf 136.04 Kb )
Contact: Victoria Picinich August 13th, 2008 401-463-5368 (w)
RI Health Care for America Now Group Tells Insurance Industry:
Stop Putting Profits Before Our Health
HCAN Highlighted Small Business Health Care Woes
Cranston, RI -- On August 13th, Health Care for America Now and allies gather in front of United HealthCare of New England’s offices to release a report on the skyrocketing profits the insurance industry skimmed from health insurance premiums this year in contrast to the growing rates of uninsured and the challenges thousands of underinsured Rhode Islanders face trying to access needed health care.
The action is part of the newly launched Health Care for America Now (HCAN) national campaign. Similar actions are planned in 45 states over the next few months in the nationwide effort to win quality, affordable health care for all. Health Care for America Now is an unprecedented nation-wide coalition of major organizations including large state-based membership groups, women’s groups, labor unions doctors, nurses, small businesses, and leading net-roots activists.
“In 2009, we will either have a guarantee of quality, affordable health care we all can count on or we will continue to be at the mercy of the private health insurance industry that is charging us more, giving us less and putting company profits before our health,” said Karen Malcolm, Executive Director of Ocean State Action, the lead HCAN organization in Rhode Island. “Here in Rhode Island and in communities all across the country, we’re asking one question, ‘Which side are you on?’ Are you on the side of quality, affordable health care for all? Or are you on the side of being left alone to fend for yourself in a complicated, bureaucratic insurance market?”
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For Immediate Release ( hcop_press_statement_on_global_waiver_hearing_08-04-2008.pdf 89.99 Kb ):
Contact: Meghan Purvis August 4, 2008 Ocean State Action 401-463-5368
Health Care Organizing Project Urges Close Scrutiny of Global Medicaid Waiver Application
The group cautions the waiver proposal is "unnecessary, radical, risky and wrong for Rhode Island”
CRANSTON: Members of the Health Care Organizing Project (HCOP) issued a call today to the people of Rhode Island to bring a critical eye to the joint hearing of the Senate and House Finance Committees scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, August 5th at 1pm at the State House. The unusual August meeting of the Finance Committees is an important step in the ongoing process the state is pursuing to negotiate a global Medicaid waiver with the Federal Government.
Karen Malcolm, Executive Director of Ocean State Action, who is working on this issue with the 24 organizations that comprise the Health Care Organizing Project, states; “The prospect of this global waiver at this particular political and economic moment is tremendously dangerous to the people of the state of Rhode Island. The waiver would cap the Medicaid dollars our state receives from the Federal Government and would open the door to significant cuts in Medicaid services and eligibility for thousands of seniors, children, and disabled Rhode Islanders that depend on the program for critical health care needs.”
Tuesday’s joint finance hearing is important to providing transparency in this process. Without a full public vetting, Rhode Islanders will be left in the dark as to their family’s access to health care may be curtailed. HCOP therefore calls on the people of the state to pay close attention as this process moves forward and to urge the Finance Committee Chairs to ask critical questions at tomorrow’s hearing. The group provided a list of important questions that were forwarded to members of the Committee. (see below)
The waiver application, released publicly last week by the Executive Office of Health & Human Services is the result of broad leeway provided them in the 2009 state budget to seek the global waiver from Federal authorities as part of the $67 million Medicaid cost cutting strategy of the Carcieri Administration. Malcolm notes, “The Health Care Organizing Project is sounding the alarm today because we must do all we can to bring public scrutiny to this plan and to lend an alternative perspective to the Carcieri administration’s rational for moving forward.”
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Visit the Rhode Island Policy Reporter at What Cheer! for up-to-date policy analysis and reports.
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