Category: Health Care Reform Forum - 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

Know your protest rights - Of Interest to Our Community

5/6/2025

Know your protest rights

ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

The First Amendment protects your right to assemble and express your views through protest. However, police and other government officials are allowed to place certain narrow restrictions on the exercise of speech rights. Make sure you’re prepared by brushing up on your rights before heading out into the streets.

Are you going to continue to protest to stand up for your values? Are you organizing the protest or just planning to attend? What can you take pictures of when you are there? What if the police approach you during the protest? Know your rights! Read the article here.

Separation of church and state - Of Interest to Our Community

5/6/2025

Is Iowa saying bye-bye to the separation of church and state?

Bleeding Heartland

PACG's dear friend and co-founder of One Human Family-QCA, Rabbi Henry Karp, wrote this article for Bleeding Heartland. It's an important read.

As an Iowan, a Jew, and a rabbi who has served the Quad Cities Jewish community for nearly 40 years, I was beside myself when I read Dr. Thomas Lecaque’s guest column in Iowa Starting Line about the school chaplain bill moving through the Iowa legislature. Having made its way through the House and the Senate Education Committee, it is now eligible for floor debate in the Senate.

House File 884 is an offense of the highest degree to every non-Christian faith community in our state. It empowers school districts to hire chaplains “to provide support, services, and programs as assigned by the board of directors of the school district.”

If that sounds innocuous, think again, for the Senate Education Committee has already rejected an amendment that would restrict school chaplains from proselytizing students. So much for religious neutrality in our schools!

Such neutrality is dead when these school chaplains have been given the go-ahead to use their positions to promote their faith among the students. It should go without saying that doing so makes every non-Christian student in Iowa’s public schools—Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Shinto, Sikhs, Atheists, and so on—vulnerable to the evangelizing efforts of these chaplains. That is simply not acceptable. Read the article here.

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

Fish, Health and a "Supreme" Court - Of Interest to Our Members

2/18/2024

Two Obscure Cases about Fish May Disempower Health Agencies

Health Care Reform Forum

SCOTUS appears poised to substitute its judgment for that of career scientists

Federal regulation led by career professionals in administrative agencies keeps Americans healthy and safe. Congress empowers and relies on the scientific and technical expertise of regulatory agencies to implement and achieve broad health and safety goals, spanning clean air and water, healthcare, disaster preparedness, disease control, workplace safety, and safe foods and drugs.

But interest groups backed by major private sector financing have been working to undermine the agencies' regulatory authority through litigation. And now, the Supreme Court is set to decide two cases that will likely upend how the agencies interpret and implement the statutes they are empowered to administer.

Let's also remember an important fact: Federal agencies are not simply empowered to safeguard the public's health; it is their duty, and every American should want career professionals to issue rules that keep us healthy and safe, and that safeguard our environment.

Read more about these upcoming Supreme Court cases and the implications for public safety.