Giving Tuesday
November 30th is a celebration of giving. A day to pay it forward. On the heels of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, on Giving Tuesday you contribute to the causes that mean most to you. Please add Universal to your list.
Katia was a student-athlete injured on the field. She fought with her coach not to go for treatment. She knew her family didn’t have health insurance because they were immigrants living in Connecticut without papers. Your 2020 contribution helped Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut and our partners in the HUSKY 4 Immigrants coalition win health care for undocumented children up to age 8, and pregnant women the first year after delivery.
That’s good. It’s big. But, it’s not enough. In 2021, with your Giving Tuesday support, we’ll fight to help those still waiting for care.
Brian owns two bicycle shops and wants the people who work for him to ride without fear a spill will land them first in the hospital, then the poorhouse. With the help of donors like you, Universal fought to lower the cost of health insurance for CT’s small businesses.
We advocated for an expansion of the state employee health plan so small employers could benefit from the comptroller’s skillful negotiations for better coverage and lower price tags. Insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industry heavyweights spent more than $1.3 million dollars advertising and lobbying during the 2021 legislative session. They threw their weight around, wooed the governor and legislators and killed that good idea. They left Brian and tens of thousands of small business leaders like him unable to provide better benefits.
If that wasn’t bad enough, then, the insurance companies boldly asked the state insurance department to approve double-digit cost increases for small business policyholders. Can you believe it?
The department quibbled a little before they approved increases more than twice the rate of inflation. With your help, we shamed them some and kept the companies from getting every penny they wanted. But we learned our influence pales in comparison with their dollars. To achieve universal health care, we must out-weigh the power of vested interests – and with your help this Giving Tuesday, we will!
Thank you for your contribution of $250, $1000 or whatever amount works best for your budget.
Your contribution will help create a vibrant network of informed, trained and motivated organizations and individuals issuing the clarion call for policymakers to enact legislation and regulation to “bend the arc” in the direction of universal health care.
Twenty years in the trenches, Universal has built a reputation as lean and scrappy – a committed and passionate group, armed with sound research, led by its values and grit. We believe universal health care sits squarely within a wider social justice fight. The COVID-19 experience (especially its disparate impacts on people of color), the right-wing insurgency, antidemocratic efforts to limit the vote, and 2020’s racial justice uprisings make clear, the movement for social justice, racial justice – including health justice – must build greater and more durable power. This is no limited campaign.
This is work. Ongoing and substantial and will deliver real change. On Giving Tuesday, you give to coach and train grassroots leaders. Help build knowledge and hone organizing and advocacy skills and power a victorious, long over-due, force for universal health care.
No gift is too large to be put to work and none is too small to make a difference.
A gift of $50 convenes advocacy groups like the coalition working to hold down the cost of prescription drugs.
A gift of $100 raises Universal’s flag on Facebook and Twitter.
A gift of $250 writes, edits, designs, and distributes one issue of Health Care Headlines.
A gift of $5000 convenes and facilitates focus groups to vet research and test messages.
A gift of $7,500 leverages one of Universal's grants to grassroots organizations.