Guaranteed Health Care for All

got healthcare?

The objectives of our got healthcare? program were to keep health care reform at the top of the public agenda in Wisconsin during the battle for comprehensive national reform, shape the public debate with message frames and messengers that would make reform more likely, build the breadth and depth of the grassroots health care coalitions we lead, and to use incremental reform at the state level to increase pressure for federal action.

In 2009 Citizen Action further developed its national reputation as one of the leading state-based groups promoting comprehensive health care reform. Citizen Action won two national awards for its got healthcare? program. Robert Kraig, Citizen Action's Executive Director, won the 2009 Consumer Health Care Advocate of the Year award from Families USA. In June 2009 Citizen Action won the State Progressive Leader award from the Progressive States Network for our health care work.

Health Care for America Now!
In 2009 Citizen Action of Wisconsin continued to lead the Health Care for America Now campaign in Wisconsin, a national grassroots effort to pass comprehensive federal health care legislation. The Wisconsin Health Care for America Now coalition has organized major town hall forums around the state with Members of Congress, organized constituents to make thousands of phone calls and send hundreds of email messages to their Representatives and Senators in support of specific elements of reform, organized delegation visits to local and Washington D.C. offices of Members of Congress, and helped organize or participate in dozens of public forums, house parties, educational events, webinars, and earned media activities, including vigils and direct action events targeting insurance companies.

Citizen Action's leading achievement in 2009 was the integration of our got healthcare? program with the nationally coordinated Health Care for America Now campaign, and the tremendous escalation of our organizing around health care reform to match the elevation of the issue to the top of the national agenda.

We achieved this result through a focused and integrated issue program that combined the leadership of a vibrant state-wide coalition with multiple credible voices for reform, field organizing around public forums and congressional listening sessions, message trainings that disseminated the most effective message frames to activists throughout the state, the development and release of timely research reports, and a robust earned media operation that effectively positioned Citizen Action as the leading advocate of national reform in Wisconsin. We also had a great deal of success developing a state-wide health care story project, and integrating our state and federal health care reform advocacy.

The intensity of our health care work reached unprecedented levels. Our health care coalition work was much broader and more intensive than ever before. Our regular coordinating calls, for example, draw leaders from a broad range of constituencies, and coalition partners were highly involved in dozens of public events throughout the state. There are over 50 organizational members in the state-wide health care coalition that Citizen Action leads. In addition, Citizen Action played leading roles in 53 health care forums, 8 large scale (150-250 person) town hall meetings, conducted 21 message trainings, sent 51 email action alerts to our 21,000 person email list, released 12 highly newsworthy research reports which drew state-wide attention, and delivered over 64,000 signed petitions and post cards in support of reform to Wisconsin’s Senators and Members of Congress. We expanded our social media program, which provides daily updates on Facebook and Twitter on new health care debate developments and action items.

Citizen Action generated 367 media stories in 2009, with a large proportion of them focused on the positive message frames and personal stories that are needed to promote comprehensive reform. Citizen Action spokespersons are frequent guests on state-wide public radio and on local commercial radio stations. We also launched our “No Sacred Cows” health care blog to keep activists and opinion leaders up to date on the latest national health care developments.

Our research reports also played a major role in generated media coverage. One example was our health insurance cost ranking report which we released in December. The report, which was researched in-house, ranks cities across Wisconsin on health insurance costs and quality. We released the report on state-wide media call which included U.S. Congressman Ron Kind, and 3 state legislators, including the Chairs of the State Senate and State Assembly Health Committees. The report generated state-wide media focus on skyrocketing health insurance costs in Wisconsin and the low quality of for-profit insurance (23 media stories) just at the U.S. Senate was preparing to vote on its final health care reform package. The report can be downloaded here.

One of the high points of our work in 2009 was the coalition response to the fierce conservative organizing against health care reform during the August 2009 Congressional recess, which threatened to undermine the entire national reform effort. Citizen Action organized around dozens of Congressional listening sessions, providing a strong counterbalance to extreme conservative protesters. The most notable was an event organized by our coalition in Green Bay in late August with Congressman Steve Kagen, one of the targets of anti-reform groups, which drew national attention. The 400 person event drew wall-to-wall media coverage and helped turn the tide back in favor of reform in Northeast Wisconsin.

Story Project
The development of our health care story project, which now has over 200 stories from across the state, added another critical dimension to the effort. The story project helped us shape the public debate with the voices of average people facing health care challenges and was also a very effective leadership development tool, empowering average citizens to make a difference in the debate by meeting with members of Congress, speaking at public events, and becoming the subjects of media stories. The Citizen Action story project was highlighted as a model for other states at Families USA’s Health Action Conference in January 2009 and January 2010, the largest annual gathering of health care reform advocates.

State Health Care Reform
Citizen Action also effectively integrated the push for national reform with the promotion of state-level reform. Citizen Action initiated in 2009 a series of state level insurance regulation bills which prohibited some of the worst industry practices. Our education program resulted in both the passage of valuable incremental reforms (limiting preexisting condition abuses, greater access to affordable private insurance, and the right for children to stay on their parent’s policies until 27 years of age) and broader public attention to insurance industry practices which helped build deeper support for national reform. We also successfully advocated for an expansion of BadgerCare Plus (Wisconsin’s Medicaid and Child Health Insurance Program) to include childless adults, which made Wisconsin’s public health insurance programs among the most expansive in the nation.

Economic Justice

Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods Project
In July of 2009 Citizen Action merged with a previously independent non-profit organization, Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods (GJLN). GJLN is the Wisconsin affiliate of Partnership for Working Families, and is nationally recognized for landmark community benefits legislation in Milwaukee, notably the historic passage of the Milwaukee Opportunities for Restored Employment (MORE) Ordinance in early 2009. The project will be rewarded with grantee of the year honors by the Wisconsin Community Fund in April of 2010 for its groundbreaking responsible development work.

National Economic Recovery
In late 2009 our work to expand collaborative efforts to guide stimulus investment and shape positive outcomes for disadvantaged communities was significantly boosted when a consortium of nine organizations in Wisconsin was awarded nearly half a million dollars by the Open Society Institute. In 2010 Citizen Action and our coalition partners are continuing to organize around advocacy for and monitoring of federal recovery dollars.

Community Centered Redevelopment
Citizen Action, in collaboration with Midwest Environment Advocates and Making Milwaukee Green Coalition, a project of the League of Young Voters affiliate in Milwaukee, also made substantial progress on a community-centered redevelopment plan for the former A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive site in Milwaukee’s central city.

Responding to community pressure and engagement from the GJLN coalition, the Department of City Development proposed in late July 2009 that the City purchase the land for redevelopment. In September 2009, the Milwaukee Common Council approved this proposal and established a $35 million redevelopment plan including a $15 million tax incremental financing (TIF) district, and will include full application of the MORE Ordinance. Citizen Action strongly advocated for adoption of this plan. The City closed on this property acquisition of 84 acres in December 2009, and is moving forward on implementation of their plan to remediate the contamination on the site and prepare it for redevelopment as the “Century City” development project. This is a significant victory in our efforts to focus attention on this site. Our work has helped to steer the investment of significant public resources for the purpose of fostering business development and creating jobs in this impoverished neighborhood, and has been acknowledged publicly by Department of City Development officials.

2008

In 2008 Citizen Action combined issue organizing with civic engagement to create a mandate for bold health care reform in the state, and solidified a link between state activism and national action.

Communications: Citizen Action generated 585 distinct media stories in 2008. These stories were positive, and were overwhelmingly focused on the progressive value frames we seek to advance. Of these stories, 379 were written specifically on health care reform. Other topics covered included our work for fair elections and civic participation, worker justice, ending the war in Iraq, and at the end of the year, economic recovery.

In 2008 our web site had over 20,000 visitors. Citizen Action sent 98 statewide and regional email alerts to activists with subjects ranging from invitations to attend issue forums to appeals for calls to Congress to requests for letters-to-the-editor. Thousands of activists responded to these appeals to take action.

Research Reports: Citizen Action released or co-released eight research reports in 2008. Five of these reports were produced in house by Citizen Action’s staff. The reports released were accompanied with events in one or more of our organizing regions or on state-wide media calls that included key state legislators and members of Congress. These reports were newsworthy because they provided compelling Wisconsin specific information that helped shape the health care discussion during the election.

Civic Engagement: In both the spring and fall of 2008, Citizen Action engaged in significant non-partisan Get Out The Vote (GOTV) operations, primarily focused in Milwaukee. In the Spring, Citizen Action deployed 230 canvassers who focused on 58 wards with the goal of activating citizens to go to the polls. The GOTV phone canvass in Milwaukee, working in coalition with the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees facilitated over 9,500 conversations with voters in 100 city wards.

Through the early summer and into fall of 2008, Citizen Action engaged in a voter registration program, in conjunction with our work through the Wisconsin Civic Engagement Program and coalition partners, and registered 5,331 new voters in the City of Milwaukee. Citizen Action deployed 80 canvassers that engaged in more than 20,000 discussions about the importance of voting.

One-on-One Organizing: Citizen Action continues to recruit and train progressive activists and leaders in all regions of the state through face to face communication at a grassroots level. In 2008 our Western and Northeastern organizing staff built networks of 401 individual activists, held a variety of events that drew nearly 750 people, and held over 296 one-on-one meetings. The Community Outreach Program Organizer, focused primarily in the Milwaukee area, held 411 one-on-one meetings, hosted 13 workshops which trained 499 people in organizing and activism, and has identified 42 adults and youths to participate in our “Leadership Pathway,” an 18 month leadership development program.

Health Care Reform: Citizen Action played a leading role in making health care the top issue in Wisconsin in 2008 by educating and mobilizing people, releasing newsworthy reports, developing compelling messages, and building a state-wide coalition to support major coverage expansions. In doing so, Citizen Action has built a solid reputation statewide and nationally as a leading advocate for health care reform in Wisconsin.

got healthcare?

Launched in May of 2008, Citizen Action began a visibility campaign called got healthcare? that was designed to make health care the top issue for voters in Wisconsin. A distinctly Wisconsin-branded bird dogging ("cow-dogging") project targeted candidates for elective office. Parodying commercials urging people to drink milk, prototypical Wisconsin Holstein cows (actually Citizen Action members dressed in a cow suits) carried signs that asked state and federal candidates: got healthcare? The cow traveled to state legislative forums, Presidential campaign events, local fairs, marched in parades, supported rallies and protests, and made special “guest” appearances at coalition partner events. The got healthcare? cows were reported in major news outlets across the state as a staple at events.

Local health care advisory referenda

Building on an award winning national model for agenda setting developed by Citizen Action and its coalition partners in 2006, local health care advisory referenda were added to local ballots in 22 cities and counties in 2008. The health care advisory referenda were widely credited with creating an issue environment that played a pivotal role creating a mandate for the state Senate and the newly elected state Assembly to take legislative action to solve the health care crisis. The local referenda led to an intense local focus among the public and in the media on the failure of the Legislature to act on the health care crisis.

More than 588,000 voters had the opportunity to vote on a health care referenda in their municipality in 2008. The referenda passed overwhelmingly, garnering over 411,000 "Yes" votes. Support ranged from 66% to 85% of the vote. The referendums were especially strong in traditionally moderate and conservative areas of the state. In fact, in 17 of 22 communities the referendum ran even or ahead of Dane County, traditionally the most liberal area of the state. The highest vote totals where in Menasha (85%), Tomah (83%), River Falls (83%); Douglas County (81%), Menomonie (80%), Black River Falls (79%), New Richmond (79%), Washburn County (79%), Oshkosh (78%), and River Falls (78%).

2007

* Took the lead in organizing the Wisconsin Health Care Reform Campaign, an unprecedented coalition of 30 state-wide organizations, including unions, faith based organizations, and advocates for seniors, farmers, the disabled, children and families. The new coalition is working intensively to secure comprehensive health care reform this Legislative session.

2006

    * Secured the gubernatorial veto of legislation that would have made it impossible for lead paint manufacturers to be held liable for their product an important follow-up to our winning our year-long fight to get the City ofSeniorcare bill signing in 2001 Milwaukee to sue the lead paint industry to pay its fair share of lead clean-up costs in Milwaukee.
    * Successfully sued pharmaceutical companies, in coalition with other consumer groups nationwide, to stop them from engaging in fraud and illegal price manipulation.
    * Created a mandate for health care reform in the 2007-2008 Legislative session. Through massive state-wide issue work in 2006, including the initiation of universal health care referendums across the state which garnered 83% of the vote, took the lead in making comprehensive health care reform the top issue in state elections.

2005

    * Successfully pushed for a change to Wisconsin consumer lending law to prohibit auto lenders from discriminating against consumers on the basis on race, age, creed, religion, color, disability, marital status, sex, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, membership in the military or receiving public assistance.

    * Won passage and implementation of Badger Rx, a state buying pool that is expected to save individuals between 25% - 75% on their prescription drug purchases. One in every six Wisconsin residents is expected to be eligible to participate.

    * Helped push back the effort to privatize Social Security. We targeted the position of U.S. Representative and gubernatorial candidate Mark Green in a six-month campaign generating 9 media stories and over 1,000 handwritten letters on the issue (2005).

2004

* Helped residents fight off Wal-Mart in Franklin and Sheboygan.

2003

* Succcessfully fought to restore $60 million of public health money that the medical school was planning to use to fund a new medical school building.

2002

* Succcessfully organized central city parents to secure $1.8 million in state funding for afterschool programs in Community Learning Centers serving 12,000 children and their families.

Seniorcare bill signing in 20012001

* Won our 18-month battle to pass a real prescription drug benefits bill in Wisconsin.� SeniorCare is the second most generous prescription drug benefit in the nation.

1999

* Won the passage of the landmark Community Lead Safe Zones ordinance that alleviates Milwaukee's severe lead-poisoning problem among thousands of young children in the central city.

1998

    * Passed the "Citizen's Right to Know" Bill, which requires electronic disclosure of campaign contributions, making it easier for citizens to trace special-interest influence on state policy.

    * Helped win passage of the Mining Moratorium Law which raises the bar protecting Wisconsin from unsafe metallic sulfide mining.

    * Assisted in winning passage of "Justin and Lindsey Bill" repealing restrictive caps on what families of wrongful death may sue for.

1996

* Helped win passage of the Food Safety Act of 1996, which strengthens federal pesticide standards to better protect children.

1994

* Won the right for farmers who refuse to use rBGH to label their products accordingly.

1990

* Won the first public disclosure of insurance companies auto rates by forcing the State Insurance Commissioner to publish the Auto Rate Guide (for a free copy call 1-800-236-8517). 1989: Won an expansion of the voluntary program for Medicare assignment.