Category: Health Care - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Healthcare Reform Forum legislative visit - After Action Report

5/27/2025

Visit to Miller-Meeks office about Medicaid cuts - After Action Report

Healthcare Reform Forum

We met with Miller-Meeks staff about our concerns about the proposed Medicaid cuts to support tax breaks for billionaires. We presented the staff with facts and figures about the consequences of funding cuts, including costs to the state (Iowa), loss of coverage for people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) due to Medicaid expansion, and loss of rural hospitals and providers.

Rael Slavensky (he/him)

Healthcare Reform Forum legislative visit - After Action Report

5/21/2025

Healthcare Reform Forum legislative visit After Action Report

Healthcare Reform Forum

PACG's Healthcare Reform Forum met with staff at US Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks' staff in Davenport on May 19th. We expressed our concerns about the proposed Medicaid cuts to support tax breaks for billionaires. We had a productive meeting and plan to do this again in the near future.

Healthcare Reform Forum legislative visit - After Action Report

5/15/2025

Meeting with legislators After Action Report

Healthcare Reform Forum

On May 6th forum members participated in meetings at both Senators Grassley's and Ernst's offices in Davenport about potential cuts to Medicaid. We presented the staff with facts and figures about the consequences of funding cuts, including costs to the state (Iowa), loss of coverage for people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) due to Medicaid expansion, and loss of rural hospitals and providers.

Rael Slavensky

The Reality of Project 2025-Of Interest to Our Community

4/29/2025

The Reality of Project 2025

Red Wine and Blue

A grassroots organization Red Wine & Blue has been keeping track of the implementation of 2025 projects. They also provide recommendations on how we can fight back. For more information go here,

You can contact them or subscribe to their email update here,

Red Wine & Blue

Hands Off rally has huge turnout - After Action Report

4/5/2025

Hands Off! An estimated 2000 Quad Cities activists fight back

Mass Mobilization on Saturday, April 5th

PACG joined thousands of protesters at the "Hands Off!" Rally at Friends of MLK Park and Interpretive Center in Davenport, IA, on Saturday April 5th from 11 am to 1:00 pm. This is one of many such events held across the country opposing the actions taken by the president and his staff on human rights, employment, civil rights, immigration, education, the environment, and many other issues that affect the daily lives of all Americans. On this chilly morning, concerned citizens with signs and voices filled the park to listen to speakers and to rally the traffic on both sides of Brady Street from the bottom of the hill to the top. Cars driving by honked their support of the event. We are making an impact!

Twelve hundred rallies were organized by Indivisible and other groups, and every state in the union had at least one rally. We published this post about the plans for the Davenport rally earlier this week.

Here's the first bit of press about our rally: Hands Off rally draws big crowd in Davenport by Ed Tibbetts.

We are also using two videos by Stella Roeser. Here is the crowd driving up Brady. Here is a walking view of some of the crowd.

The images below were from Stella and Kyle Roeser and Ann McCluskey. Thank you!

"How Pregnancy is Policed" - Of Interest to our Community

8/23/2024

How Pregnancy is Policed: Your Questions Answered

Gender Equity Forum

From Bolts: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, the legal risks that come from merely being pregnant have shot up in the United States.

Alongside the new bans on abortion, laws have popped up to encourage people to snitch on their neighbors and empower prosecutors to file criminal charges. So-called personhood laws are exposing more people to heightened punishment, plus endangering access to other procedures like IVF. The Republican Party has proposed scaling that up further by codifying ‘personhood’ at the federal level.

But pregnancy was policed long before the Dobbs decision came down. Even under Roe, many women faced arrest and prosecution due to allegations over how they handled their pregnancy. Read this important article on the Bolts website here.

Abortion Rights Solidarity Circle in Davenport - Action Alert!

6/27/2024

Call to Action! Solidarity Circle for Abortion Rights
Friday at 6:00 pm

Lafayette Park
700 W 4th ST
Davenport, IA (map)Gender Equity Forum

Planned Parenthood of the North Central States

The Iowa Supreme Court decision on the six-week abortion ban will be released on Friday, June 28th. The six-week ban was passed in 2018 but was found to be unconstitutional and never went into effect. Republican lawmakers passed another six-week abortion ban in June 2023, but an injunction was placed on the ban by the Iowa Supreme Court. On Friday the Court will decide whether to let the ban go into effect or not.

In response to the upcoming Iowa Supreme Court decision, Planned Parenthood has organized a rally either in celebration of our retained rights of reproductive freedom or against the cruelty of imposing an abortion ban in Iowa. We firmly believe that reproductive decisions need to be made between an individual and their health care provider. The government should not intervene in any way.

The Gender Equity forum of PACG invites you and your friends to join other supporters of reproductive rights in Lafayette Park at 6:00 pm. We will gather and walk down 4th ST during rush hour for maximum visibility. Planned Parenthood will have plenty of signs in case you don't have your own.

In solidarity!

Alta Price

Iowa ACLU Door Knock Day of Action May 18, 2024

4/27/2024

Iowa ACLU Door-Knock Day of Action - Update
Saturday, May 18th at 1 pm

Private residence in Bettendorf

Our PACG activists, especially those interested in gender equity, are invited to participate in this statewide Door-Knock Day of Action on May 18 sponsored by the Iowa ACLU. This action is to mobilize voters to stand for reproductive freedom. We will be covering parts of Bettendorf.

Please watch the Iowa ACLU online video to complete the training for this door-knocking action. The recorded training link is here (the passcode is dn=$Mi8Y).

You will need to contact me for the address to pick up your materials. Click on my name below and I will email you the address.

Alta Price

From Becca Eastwood, Advocacy Campaign Manager, Iowa ACLU:

In a devastating vote last July, the Iowa state legislature passed a near total abortion ban.

In less than two months, the Iowa Supreme Court will decide the future of that ban.

While we can’t control the outcome of the case, we can make sure we are mobilizing as many Iowans as possible to stand for reproductive freedom.

Join us on Saturday, May 18 to hit the doors in Bettendorf and talk to our fellow Iowans directly!

Register for Door-Knock Day of Action on May 18

The actions that WE take mean the difference between an Iowa where we make our own decisions about our bodies & futures or one where politicians make them for us.

Personal conversations with our fellow Iowans are the most effective way to build the power we need. So let’s hit the doorsteps!

Sign up today to join ACLU volunteers in Bettendorf for this statewide action!

We provide:

Comprehensive training
Script & all materials
List of addresses (these will all be folks we believe are open to this issue)

You provide:

1.5-2 hours of your time
Maybe a friend to bring with you!

ACLU takes fight for Trans to SCOTUS - No Hate In Our States

11/2/2023

ACLU takes fight for Trans youth health care to Supreme Court

Gender Equity Forum

ACLU: We’re determined to pursue every path available toward a brighter future for trans people and our families.

In the span of just a few years, transgender people have had their rights and lives radically reshaped by a litany of political attacks against our freedom, our dignity, and the health care many of us need to live. As part of a coordinated national effort to erode legal protections for trans people and push us out of public life, a wave of bills targeting gender-affirming health care for transgender people have effectively banned it for nearly one-third of transgender youth in the United States. These laws uproot entire families and communities, alarm doctors and medical experts, and endanger the very young people they laws claim to protect.

While the ACLU and our nationwide affiliates succeeded in the trial courts when the judges actually considered the facts, these early wins have increasingly been overturned, allowing these devastating bans to take effect. This includes the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where a three-judge panel overturned a lower court decision, which had blocked Tennessee’s ban. As a result of the Sixth Circuit decision, health care bans have gone into effect in Tennessee and Kentucky.

In each of these challenges, we are committed to exhausting every option we have with the goal of protecting the ability of our community to access this care for as long as possible. That’s why, today, we’ve asked the United States Supreme Court to review the lower court’s ruling and block these dangerous laws from further threatening transgender youth, destabilizing their families, and needlessly tying the hands of their medical providers.

In this case, we have the honor of representing LW, a 15-year-old transgender girl, and her mother Samantha Williams. Like nearly 100,000 families with transgender kids ages 13 to 17 who now live in a state that has banned their health care, LW and her parents face the risk of either being denied the care they and their doctor know is right for their daughter or leaving the only home LW has known. Tennessee’s ban — like the nearly identical laws passed in 20 other state legislatures in the last three years — directly targets LW because she is transgender.

At the core of our argument before the court are two basic constitutional claims. First, Tennessee’s law bans treatment only when that treatment is provided to transgender youth like LW who have gender dysphoria. This targeted restriction discriminates based on both sex and the fact that a person is transgender and violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Second, Tennessee’s law interferes with the ability of parents like Samantha to make medical decisions for their minor children even though their children and doctors all agree the treatment is necessary. The law substitutes the state’s judgment for that of loving parents who are following the guidance of their children and the advice of doctors. The Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have certain fundamental rights concerning the care and custody of their minor children. While the rights of parents are importantly not absolute — and transgender youth have rights all their own — Tennessee’s law forces a one-fits-all approach to treatment that overrides the informed judgment of parents, adolescents, and doctors. Tennessee’s law forces parents like Samantha to “co-parent” with their state legislature. It is particularly pernicious when that legislative body has made it clear they have no interest in learning the truth about this medical care and young people like LW.

Asking the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision is always something we take seriously. We have witnessed this court disregard and infringe people’s bodily autonomy repeatedly, most recently with its devastating decision in Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade. We take this step with full knowledge that, no matter what happens, we will have to fight for each other and use every tool in our toolbox to defend all our rights to bodily autonomy. With such critical, life-or-death health care on the line, we must continue to fight back against Tennessee’s law and exhaust every option available to us. No matter what happens, we will continue to fight thoughtfully and creatively to ensure that everyone can access the health care they need.

The last few months have been the most personally and professionally devastating of my life. My heart — and the heart of every transgender advocate fighting this fight — is heavy with the weight of the dehumanization and needless harm trans people like us are experiencing nationwide. But I also know that every out trans person has embraced the unknown in the name of living free from shame or the vice of other people’s expectations. By virtue of being a living, breathing trans person, each of us has chosen hope over despair. Regardless of any court, we will always exist in joyful defiance of efforts to limit who we are and who we can be.

The entire article is here. Cases like this are a good reason to support the ALCU.

Medicare “Advantage” isn’t - Of Interest to Our Forum Members

10/17/2023

Medicare “Advantage” - well, it isn't

Health Care Reform Forum
Blog for Iowa

Medicare Advantage overbills by $140 BILLION a year!That is enough to end Medicare premiums and add services.

Physicians For a National Health Policy (PNHP) released a scathing report on the HUGE amount of money that so-called “Medicare Advantage” is over billing. It’s important to know that Medicare Advantage is NOT a Medicare plan and it is NOT any sort of advantage. It is private insurance paid for by the government.

The report published Wednesday estimates that privately run, government-funded Medicare Advantage plans are overcharging U.S. taxpayers by up to $140 billion per year, a sum that could be used to completely eliminate Medicare Part B premiums or fully fund Medicare’s prescription drug program.

PNHP has been working on reforming America’s health care for decades. As I often say, America pays twice as much for half the care that all other industrialized countries get. This video is three members of congress pointing out that “Medicare Advantage” is simply a corporate ripoff.

Watch a great (short) video and read the entire article at Blog for Iowa.

Alta Price