Springfield – Over 500 members of SEIU Healthcare Illinois – the state’s largest union of health care and child care workers – rallied in front of the State Capitol today to urge their elected officials to protect critical long-term care, hospital and child care programs by passing essential legislation and finding a lasting solution to the budget crisis through new revenue.
“Now is the time to protect the vital care provided in Illinois hospitals, nursing homes, and through our home care and child care programs,” said SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana President Keith Kelleher. “Our elected officials must hear that it’s time to save essential services and protect them for the future by passing legislation to protect health care for long-term care workers who provide the care Illinois seniors depend on and finding new revenue.”
 
After the rally, members of SEIU Healthcare Illinois met with legislators to urge them to prioritize the following in the 2010 budget:

• Protecting health care for 8,000 nursing home workers who will lose their health insurance May 1st unless immediate action is taken to save it (HB503 & HB504);
• Continuing Illinois’ investment in quality home care for seniors and people with disabilities by investing in home care aides (HB443 & HB444 and SB1286 & SB1287);
• ncreasing access to affordable, quality child care by expanding eligibility for the Child Care Assistance Program and lowering parent co-pays; and
• Addressing the fiscal crisis through new revenue.

(Download the fact sheet for more information on SEIU Healthcare Illinois’ FY10 priorities.)

“There are too many working families who don’t have health insurance right now,” explained Grace Livingston, a certified nurse’s assistant at Imperial of Hazel Crest nursing home in Hazel Crest. “With the weak economy and working people already struggling to make ends meet, now is not the time to threaten health care for long-term care workers and the future of senior care in Illinois.”

“If we lose our health care,” said Alicia Lee, a home care worker from Chicago, “we’ll have to turn to the same overcrowded emergency rooms that so many laid-off and newly unemployed workers are turning to. There just isn’t enough care to go around anymore. We need to save what we have and strengthen it for the future.”