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Jewish Community News
News: March 2007
600 gather at Shir Hadash, urge health care reform
More than 600 people attended a mid-February event at Congregation Shir
Hadash to urge county and state legislators to take action to reform the
California health care system. State Assemblymembers Jim Beall (24th District),
Sally Lieber (22nd District), and Ira Ruskin (21st District), as well
as County Supervisor Liz Kniss agreed after the meeting to work on legislation
to provide Californians with affordable health care.
On the county level, Supervisor Liz Kniss, chair of the county Health
and Hospital Committee, announced the creation of new county wide task
force committed to coordinating efforts to expand health coverage to uninsured
residents in Santa Clara County. As a first step, Supervisor Kniss promised
to support the development of a “Three-Payer” pilot proposal
that would begin offering health coverage to low-income adults employed
by small businesses in the county. The proposal, developed by Working
Partnerships USA, the County Health & Hospital System, and the Santa
Clara Family Health Plan, would offer 5,000 working adults the opportunity
to get coverage at no additional cost to the county.
Shir Hadash member Adrián Cerda, co-chair of the event, felt “energized
to see so many members of Shir Hadash, Beth Am, Stanford Catholic, Unitarian
Church of Palo Alto and many others come to show their values in action.”
Congregation Shir Hadash Assistant Rabbi Joel Fleekop added, “It
was very powerful to see the sanctuary filled to capacity with people
who had come to act on their faith values. Judaism teaches that we are
to love our neighbors as ourselves -- to care for the stranger, widow
and orphan -- and not to stand idly by while our neighbor bleeds. By calling
on our elected officials to provide health care coverage to all residents
of Santa Clara County, those attending the event were putting these ancient
teachings into action.”
Members of PACT and PIA, including congregants from Shir Hadash and Beth
Am, will join together with hundreds of others from the PICO National
Network, in traveling to Washington, DC in March to press federal legislators
to continue the struggle for fixing the broken health care system in the
United States.
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