WASHINGTON, May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The following statement is being released by Rev. Michael D. Place, STD, president and chief executive officer, Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA), in regards to the Cover the Uninsured Week launch event in Washington, DC:
While the Catholic health ministry is once again pleased to be a partner of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Cover the Uninsured Week, we are equally saddened to be observing yet another such week with no real solutions in sight for the nation’s nearly 44 million uninsured.
Simply put, there is a health care crisis in this nation -- and Catholic health care providers bear witness every day to the crisis of being uninsured. We treat their illnesses and injuries in our emergency rooms and clinics. We see the uninsured present in our facilities with advance disease because they delay necessary medical treatments.
As a ministry of providers, employers, and caregivers, we believe health care is a basic human right. The Catholic health ministry is uniquely positioned to make the case for reform. For us, there is no goal closer to our mission than ensuring the health and well-being of the most vulnerable among us.
Cover the Uninsured Week represents an important part of the ministry’s overall effort to provide accessible and affordable health care for all. Participation in the week’s events contributes to our longer term and more sustained effort to educate and motivate our clinicians and employees, community leaders, and policymakers about the moral imperative to ensure access to quality and affordable health care for all.
The Catholic health ministry is fully aware that real, sustainable health reform will require an extraordinary demonstration of public and legislative will to succeed. It will require a social movement that is driven by a fundamental conviction to improve the access to quality health care for all.
We know that the challenges within the health care system are complex and the solutions are currently viewed as complicated and elusive. But those current realities will not deter us from working with our Cover the Uninsured Week partners, sponsors, and supporters to create the essential groundswell of support for comprehensive reform.
Our ministry believes it is imperative that we come together as a nation to build the necessary public will, advance the public dialogue, and lay the political and legislative groundwork that will achieve workable solutions to ensure that everyone has access to quality and affordable health care. Anything less is morally indefensible and an injustice to every uninsured woman, man, and child.
The St. Louis-based Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) is the national leadership organization of the Catholic health ministry, engaged in the strategic directions of mission, ethics, and advocacy. CHA’s more than 2,000 members form the nation’s largest group of not-for-profit health care sponsors, systems, facilities, health plans, and related organizations. For more information, visit the CHA website at http://www.chausa.org/.
Catholic Health Association of the United States
CONTACT: Fred Caesar of the Catholic Health Association of the UnitedStates, +1-202-296-3993
Web site: http://www.chausa.org/
