On June 25, thousands of people gathered at the Upper Senate Park in Washington DC to rally for health care reform. Speakers such as DNC Chairman Howard Dean and actress Edie Falco, who played Carmela on HBO’s The Sopranos, gave inspirational speeches and led the crowd into chants that echoed over the Capitol. The national rally took place in the early afternoon and was followed by lobby meetings and town hall meetings with constituents who traveled by the bus load from around the country to demand health care for all from their members of Congress.
The rally was organized by Health Care for America NOW(HCAN), a national grassroots campaign of more than 1,000 organizations representing 30 million people. Among the unions, community organizers, and national and local advocacy groups, Campus Progress stood strong to represent young people and ensure the youth voice is heard in the health care debate. We spoke to several young people about their personal stories with the current health care system and distributed facts about young people in the health care crisis:
Young Adults Suffer from the Health Care Crisis
More Than Most
• Young adults between the ages of 19 and 34
represent over one-third (34.7 %) of the
entire uninsured population.