Sixty-four organizations across Kentucky have sent a letter to Kentucky’s representatives in Washington to push for significant help for Kentuckians’ health care needs.
Saying that “this pandemic has highlighted weaknesses in Kentucky’s safety-net that have been ignored for far too long,” the coalition called Thrive Kentucky points out that even though we are in the middle of a pandemic, over 450,000 Kentuckians now have no health care. About half of that number were already without coverage before the COVID-19 crisis, and the other half have lost the health insurance that came with their employment, because they have lost their jobs.
Here are some of the items Thrive Kentucky is asking for:
- Provide large, flexible assistance to states and local governments (including those with populations under 500,000) to help make up for the significant decline in public revenue
- Prioritize funding for larger direct payments to individuals and families and create a TANF emergency fund to assist low-income Kentuckians in meeting their basic needs.
- Provide rental assistance to prevent mass evictions and increased homelessness.
- Boost funding for child care assistance to the families of essential workers.
- Require standardized COVID-19 data collection and reporting by race, ethnicity, sex and language to track inequities across states, regions, cities and towns.
- Enact comprehensive consumer protections from surprise medical bills and predatory debt collection.
The letter, which is going to all eight of Kentucky’s federal representatives, is signed by over sixty organizations, and was publicized by Kentucky Voices for Health, one of the founding members of Thrive Kentucky. The letter itself, along with the signatories, is below.
ThriveKY Letter to Kentucky Congressional Delegation
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