PICO California Project, Health Care Campaign,
Sacramento, California 

On a Saturday in November, 1999, volunteer leaders from across California shared stories of the real human costs of the crisis in healthcare and health insurance. They were not politicians or pollsters, academics or professional policy analysts. They were the people you usually meet in church halls or at public school parent nights. They were parents and grandparents, working and retired. They were Latinos, African Americans, Hmong and Caucasians.

In their own voices, they told their stories and the stories of members of their communities. Their stories had a common theme: the crisis of families in California who have no health insurance. Their stories told of huge bills from emergency rooms, diabetes and high blood pressure left untreated to devastate future health, long days sitting in crowded clinic waiting rooms hoping for a visit. 

They had met one-to-one with their friends and neighbors to gather the stories of their communities. They had conducted surveys at their churches and found that, in many congregations, 50% of families lacked health insurance. In their own voices, they put names and faces to the grim statistics of 7 million uninsured Californians, 84% of them in working families. 

The leaders of the PICO California Project made a decision: they would launch a campaign to expand access to healthcare in California. The PICO California Project is the united effort of 17 California congregation-community organizations affiliated with the Pacific Institute for Community Organization, a national network of community organizations. Collectively, the PICO California Project represents 350 congregations and 400,000 families statewide. PICO leaders are actively organizing in over 70 cities in Northern and Southern California, and in over half of the State Assembly and Senate districts. The PICO California Project has working relationships with both Democratic and Republican representatives on federal, state, county and city levels. Through its member organizations in each community, PICO unites people of diverse economic, racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. 

On the evening of May 2, 2000, three thousand people gathered at a town hall meeting in Sacramento to ask Senator John Burton, President of the State Senate Pro Tem, Secretary of Health and Human Services Grantland Johnson, and other legislators to help the uninsured with real resources and effective state policies.  Since then, PICO California Project leaders have held rallies, press conferences, town hall meetings and have continued to meet with policymakers to educate them about their concerns and priorities.  

During the year 2000, working with the California Primary Care Association, they won a commitment of $50 million in the State budget for primary care health clinic infrastructure, thereby expanding clinic healthcare for uninsured families. (Cedillo-Alarcon Clinic Investment Act of 2000) They also secured the support of Governor Davis and the Legislature to pursue expansion of the Healthy Families program to 300,000 parents of children already insured, and to future eligible families. The state submitted a waiver request to the federal government in December, 2000 to obtain permission to use the funds in this manner. 

In 2001, PICO California Project obtained a budget increase of $10 million to fund primary care health clinics which serve uninsured families. This represented nearly a 50% increase in this part of the state clinic budget. They successfully fought for Governor Davis to commit the entire state share of tobacco settlement money to healthcare. They also won a commitment of funding necessary to add parents to the Healthy Families up to 200% of the Federal Poverty Limit. 

In 2002, PICO California Project won approval from the federal government for the California Healthy Families parent waiver, another step in the campaign to expand insurance coverage. They won this waiver after faxing over 5,000 hand-written letters to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson during the month of December, 2001. 

Also in 2002, they were successful in defending Medi-Cal and other health programs from the massive cuts proposed during the budget negotiations.  In the summer of 2002, as the state faced a historic budget crisis, Governor Davis postponed state funding for the Healthy Families parent expansion. PICO California Project leaders are determined to press on and win this important expansion in the coming year.

Contact point:

Jim Keddy, Director
The PICO California Project
930 Alhambra Bl. Ste. 200
Sacramento CA 95816
Phone: (916) 447-7959
E-mail: jkeddy@picocalifornia.org