April 8, 2014
By Stephanie West
Washington, DC — SEIU nurses, doctors, child care providers and security officers participated in an Affordable Care Act education and outreach campaign that reached more than 2.4 million people.
SEIU members contacted people by holding enrollment sign-up events, making phone calls, knocking on people's doors and through online activities.
Outreach took place from October 1 through March 31. SEIU members encouraged Americans across the country to sign up for healthcare coverage available under the Affordable Care Act.
Since Congress passed and President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law just over four years ago, SEIU has played a significant role in bringing good healthcare coverage to not only the 7 million people who have signed up through marketplaces, but also to the millions of young adults up to age 26 on their parents plans, and millions more low-income working people receiving coverage through Medicaid.
Jamal Lee of Baltimore, a small business owner who, before getting insured through the Affordable Care Act, traveled to another country to save costs on medical procedures.
Kristen Boe of Estherville, Iowa, a stay-at-home mother in her 20s who has benefited from being able to stay on her father's plan until age 26 then get a marketplace plan after going for two years without insurance and without needed thyroid tests.
Sheri Hendrix of Grants Pass, Ore., got coverage under the Affordable Care Act after going without it for four years and that saved her from having to cover $30,000 in medical bills from a broken ankle after a fall.
We all benefit when insurance companies can no longer: deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions; charge women whatever they want, whenever they want to; and cut off coverage when people are in the middle of costly treatments.
Since passage of the Affordable Care Act, extremist Republicans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking the healthcare law. They wasted time and energy voting over 50 times to repeal, gut or dismantle the law.
Polling consistently shows that most Americans reject the GOP's obsession with plans to repeal the healthcare law and go back to the days when insurance companies called all the shots. A recent Bloomberg poll found that 64 percent of Americans either support the law as it is or back it with small changes.
