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About Us

Health Care for America Now Education Fund (HCANEF) believes that everyone, no matter where they live, what they look like or how much money they have should have guaranteed access to quality, affordable healthcare–including reproductive health care–they can count on.

Our history: 

HCANEF was organized in 2007 by a coalition of labor unions, grassroots groups, think tanks, on-line activist groups and constituency organizations to pass reforms that would increase access to quality, affordable healthcare through public and private plans.  Together, we passed the landmark Affordable Care Act in 2010, defending and implementing the law through dozens of attacks and repeal efforts. Since then, our coalition has worked to fully implement the ACA, to support state efforts to improve healthcare and to pass additional historic reforms including Medicare negotiations in 2022.

Our Mission:

HCANEF is committed to ensuring that everyone in our country has an opportunity to thrive. The path to improving life for millions must include eradicating systemic factors that contribute to inequity in access and outcomes while enabling the richest people to prosper at the expense of everyone else. Good health and access to quality coverage are foremost factors in ensuring economic security, opportunity, and prosperity. Our mission is to educate and engage a range of constituents, patients, decision-makers and advocates in understanding the issues that most affect health and to connect the dots on policy choices that best serve our communities. We focus on the factors that create the opportunity for families to thrive in our country and to eradicate the systemic economic, racial and gender inequities that help the richest people in the nation prosper while squashing opportunity and fairness for the rest of us. We support:

  • Protecting and expanding the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and our social safety net from legislative, administrative and political attacks that would hurt millions. 

  • Advancing a holistic approach to health that incorporates social determinants of health including more jobs that enable people to support their families, enough food to nourish their bodies, safe streets, and neighborhoods to live in, and access to the health care they need to take care of themselves and their families.

  • Restoring reproductive freedom and guaranteeing access to abortion. The decision to start a family is the most consequential health and economic choice that most people will make in their lifetime. Everyone should have the right to make that personal decision without fear of punishment or stigma. Denying people access to abortion has lifelong negative impact on their health, well-being, and families. Lawmakers must ensure everyone has the freedom to decide for themselves if and when they will have children and the means to access the care they need to end a pregnancy, continue a pregnancy or prevent a pregnancy. 

  • Making the ultra-rich and billionaire corporations pay their fair share of taxes.  Our two-tiered tax system drains money from our economy so that billionaires and big corporations can keep getting big tax breaks and hoard their wealth rather than supporting fair opportunity for everyone. The richest people in our country pay lower tax rates on their increased wealth than teachers and firefighters pay on their earned incomes, and billionaires spend their massive wealth to drown out voters’ voices so they can keep getting richer by buying influence in Congress and state legislatures.

HCAN believes that good health and access to quality coverage are lynchpins to economic security. These factors create the opportunity for families to thrive in our country and to eradicate the systemic economic, racial and gender inequities that help the richest people in the nation prosper while squashing opportunity and fairness for the rest of us. In addition to advocating for quality, affordable healthcare for all we support:

  • Making the ultra-rich and billionaire corporations pay their fair share of taxes.  Our two-tiered tax system drains money from our economy so that billionaires and big corporations can keep getting big tax breaks and hoard their wealth rather than supporting fair opportunity for everyone. The richest people in our country pay lower tax rates on their increased wealth than teachers and firefighters pay on their earned incomes, and billionaires spend their massive wealth to drown out voters’ voices so they can keep getting richer by buying influence in Congress and state legislatures. 

 

  • Protecting and expanding Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and our social safety net. Congress should protect and expand earned benefits so that families have real security to depend on in hard times. We believe that workers should retire with dignity, everyone should have enough to eat, our streets should be safe and people should have access health care they need to take care of themselves and their families. 

 

  • Restoring reproductive freedom and guaranteeing access to abortion. The decision to start a family is the most consequential health and economic choice that most people will make in their lifetime. Everyone should have the right to make that personal decision without fear of punishment or stigma. Denying people access to abortion has lifelong negative impact on their health, well-being, and families. Lawmakers must ensure everyone has the freedom to decide for themselves if and when they will have children and the means to access the care they need to end a pregnancy, continue a pregnancy or prevent a pregnancy.