Stats & Facts

• The Tennessee Health Care Campaign is a statewide, non-profit, non-partisan organization working for guaranteed, affordable choices in health care. We work from the grassroots to the grasstops—that is, with regular citizens in the communities where they live to policy makers at the state and national levels.
• It’s time! Americans and Tennesseans have been working toward health care reform for twenty years and now is the best opportunity we’ve ever seen to finally fix our health care system.
• Health care reform means taking care of the health & well-being of hard working Americans and our families with a fair, competent, affordable & sustainable approach to our health care system.
• Nearly 9 in 10 small business owners think health care should be available and affordable to everyone. Most small businesses don’t provide health coverage to employees—not because they don’t want to, but because they cannot afford to.
• Health care costs rank highest among top concerns facing small businesses, significantly outweighing taxes, access to capital, and access to technology.
• This is a people issue, not a partisan issue. President Obama and leaders of both major parties in Congress are working to reform our health care system. Both of Tennessee’s US Senators are on record calling for national health care reform.
• This is an economic issue, not a partisan issue. Leaders of both major parties and the president of the US Chamber of Commerce all agree that the cost of doing nothing is not an option. The US spends about $7,500 per person per year or 16.1 percent of our GDP on health care—yet we rank 30th in the world for health outcomes.
• Every other capitalist democracy has found ways to cover all their citizens for much, much less than we spend, with our 47 million uninsured. Countries include Switzerland, Germany & Japan.
• 1 in 3 Tennesseans without health insurance for some time during 2006-2007.
• 3 in 4 uninsured Tennesseans come from working families.
• 47 million Americans and more than 1 million Tennesseans have no health insurance.
• Another 25 million Americans—and half a million Tennesseans—are under-insured—meaning that they have insurance but they can’t afford their premiums, co-pays, and deductibles; or the benefits are not adequate.
• For the many Tennesseans who have health insurance, most are paying more in premiums and getting less in benefits.
• Many are one pink slip away from becoming uninsured.
• For both the uninsured & under-insured, medical debt is a real problem. Tennessee ranks first in personal bankruptcy, and half of all bankruptcies are tied to medical debt (bills).