What Does National Healthcare Reform Mean to Fishing Families?
High-Quality Health Care for Every Fishing Family!
Congress passed and the president has signed historic national healthcare reform. This is great news to commercial fishing families across the nation! For the first time, fishing families in every state can look forward to high quality affordable health care coverage.
The Fishing Partnership Health Plan model in Massachusetts demonstrates the importance of building a network of fishing associations and of generating political support at the grassroots level. The FPHP has skillfully used its network and grassroots supporters to inform and to energize members of the fishing community, to promote enrollment in the Plan, and to provide health- and safety-related services to fishermen and their families. Indeed, its unique organizing and outreach efforts have been a major factor in the success of the Plan since its beginning in 1997.
Now that Congress has passed legislation to expand healthcare coverage to most Americans, fishing communities in other states should consider emulating the time-tested ways of the FPHP, and especially those FPHP programs focused on outreach and enrollment.
Most fishermen are small business persons who operate their own boats, or they are crew members. By nature, they’re independent-minded, self-sufficient, and hard-working. Also they've learned to be skeptical. On top of that, fishing crew members move frequently from boat to boat, port to port, employer to employer. They can be hard to reach, and hard to convince.
Under a new, reformed, national system of health care, effective outreach will be essential to providing access to care for hard-to-insure groups like fishermen.
Enrolling ranchers, farmers, agriculture workers and similar groups in rural areas will, for example, prove challenging, if the FPHP experience is predictive.. To foster success on the access/enrollment front, lawmakers and policymakers have allocated substantial resources for outreach to fishing and farming communities. That was a wise move, as studies published by the Urban Institute and American Academy of Pediatrics have shown that outreach is the key to enrolling difficult to reach populations in a health plan.
While Congress was working on health reform, the FPHP met frequently with White House and Congressional staffers, as well as with members of the House and Senate, to educate them on the FPHP experience, answer questions, and provide follow-up information. We emphasized again and again the importance of community-based outreach in our model program, so naturally we were pleased when the reform bill included language consistent with our earlier outreach and education proposal.
Click here to view our proposal to Congress.
Why Fishermen’s Advocacy in the 110th Congress Mattered
In 2008 there was no guarantee that national health care reform would ever become law. In 2008 a bipartisan coalition led by Senator Kennedy and Representative Frank introduced companion bills in the Senate and House during the 110th Congress that would have made high-quality, affordable health coverage available to every fishing family in the nation. The obvious inspiration for those proposals was the Fishing Partnership Health Plan in Massachusetts. The Kennedy-Frank legislation was fully developed and gathered the support of thousands of fishermen, scores of commercial fishing associations across the nation, and 42 co-sponsors in the House and Senate of the 110th Congress. You may read the full text of the fishermen’s healthcare legislation introduced in the 110th Congress, H.R. 5404 and S.2630, ‘‘Commercial Fishing Industry Health Care Coverage Act of 2008.”
Click here for a summary of last year’s legislation.
Fishing communities around the nation advocated very effectively for H.R. 5404 and S. 2630. In fact, they generated momentum that continued through 2009-2010 and definitely helped persuade lawmakers to fund community-based outreach in the final, comprehensive health reform bill.
Click here for a list of the House co-sponsors of H.R.5404 in the 110th Congress.
Click here for a list of the Senate co-sponsors of S.2630 in the 110th Congress.
What You Can Do to Help this Year
Thank your representatives and senators in Congress for listening. “Healthcare coverage for fishing families is the #1 need shared by every fishing family in the entire nation. Thank you for providing targeted resources for outreach and education for fishermen so fishing families will get the quality coverage they deserve.” For more information on how you or your organization can help promote the goal of high-quality healthcare coverage for all fishing families, please contact us:
Fishing Partnership Health Plan
30 Chestnut Ave., Suite #2
Burlington, MA 01803
Telephone: (617) 928-3443
Toll Free: (866) 661-FPHP
Fax: (617) 928-3445
If we continue to work together, fishermen from around the U.S. will have the same access to high quality, affordable health care coverage that thousands of Massachusetts fishermen and their family members have enjoyed since 1997.
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