ABOUT Health Care for All Oregon-Action

Our Vision

We envision a health care system that:

• ensures comprehensive, high-quality health care to all

• provides care based on patients’ needs rather than profits

• focuses on prevention, effective treatment and improved medical outcomes

• is publicly-financed, directing resources to medical care and minimizing administrative expenses and waste.

WHO WE ARE

We are a statewide 501(c)4 organization working to achieve a comprehensive, equitable, publicly funded, and high-quality health care system to serve all Oregon residents, and are working with others around the nation to achieve such a system for all in the United States. We are working to be prepared to take steps both at the national and state level - it is not clear beforehand whether national or state efforts will be more fruitful to achieve the eventual goal of treating health care as a right or a public good to which everyone in the U.S. has access with no financial barriers.

Guiding principles

HCAO-Action recognizes that health care is a human right. We seek to create a health care system based on the principles of Universality, Equity, Accountability, Transparency, Participation, and health care as a Public Good.

• Universality: As a human right, health care must be accessible to everyone, without exception.

• Equity: Health care resources and services must be distributed and accessed according to people’s needs. Health, wealth, employment, age, race, gender, immigration status, and other factors should not result in any barriers to health care or disparities in health outcomes.

• Accountability: The health care system must be accountable to the people it serves. It must ensure effective delivery of care and stewardship of resources that improve individual and population health and provide means to uphold and enforce human rights standards in care.

• Transparency: The health care system must be open with regard to information, decision-making, and management.

• Participation: The health care system must enable meaningful public participation in all decisions affecting people's right to health care.

• Public Good: Health care, as a fundamental element of a just society, must not be rationed by cost as a commodity in private markets, but be secured to the people on an equitable basis by public means, similar to education, public safety, and public utilities.