Team Political/Philosophical Stance

Imagine this: you've worked hard your whole entire life and finally you've reached retirement and are excited to spend your "golden years" with your spouse. Over the next couple months, you've noticed some changes in your spouse, he/she has become increasingly forgetful and has been having odd mood swings. One day after a doctor’s visit, the doctor comes back and tells you that your spouse has Alzheimer's Disease. You now have become your spouse's caregiver, but after time the disease has progressed and you can no longer take care of your spouse-you must make the difficult decision to put him/her in a long-term care facility. Now, you're faced with the conflict of finding long-term care that is affordable, available and good quality. If you spend a lot of money, your spouse has a better chance of receiving quality care; however, you may end up spending all of your retirement money and eventually having to turn to Medicaid. Or, you could risk it and go for cheaper care and face a higher risk of your spouse receiving poor care. Unfortunately, this a situation that many Americans are having to face and that is why our group is calling for a change.

We are aligning ourselves with the democratic view of healthcare. We believe that access to long term health care is a human right, not a service or good to be bought and sold based on an imperfect market system. We believe that long term care should be made accessible to everyone in the United States. We believe that the money that is contributed to social security (taxes) should be enough to ensure that one will have access to quality long term care without having to financially burden families when one is in need of long term care.