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In Progressive Voices, Mr. Hickey writes:
"America's health care system is in meltdown. More than 45.7 million of us have no health insurance. But even those with good insurance face rising costs and a growing risk of losing the protection they have. Every year, tens of millions of Americans go uninsured for long periods -- when a layoff, a divorce, or illness itself disrupts their ability to get or pay for coverage. (Forty-one percent of working-age Americans making $20,000 to $40,000 per year lacked insurance for at least part of 2007.) Still more millions are seriously under-insured, though many don't realize it since insurance companies tend to be secretive about the conditions and procedures they refuse to cover -- until we actually need the care."
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Mr. Hickey is also available to offer comment on a new seven-week ad campaign launched this week by the Campaign for America's Future's research arm, the Institute for America's Future calling for a "Debate Worthy of a Great Nation in Trouble."
The campaign began Tuesday, September 16, 2008, with the first of seven thought-provoking ads to run each week on the Op Ed page of the New York Times, with the intent to refocus the national discussion. The first issue ad outlined how the American dream is slipping out of reach for more and more families. The second ad will address the current financial crisis and effects of deregulation on Wall Street and the banking system.
Other ads in the series will focus on our soaring global debt, broken health care system, collapsing public infrastructure, the looming global warming challenge, increasing Robber Baron corruption and the seemingly endless occupation of Iraq and the war on terror.
The Institute hopes to expand the debate beyond the newspaper, and Mr. Hickey is available to offer comment on these and other policy issues, and progressive ideas and solutions.
Campaign for America's Future is an organization launched by 100 prominent Americans to expand the national debate about America's economic future. The Campaign seeks to empower working Americans, middle-class families, and the poor to make their voices heard in support of a populist economic agenda and an expansion of democracy. Recently, Mr. Hickey organized and helped to lead a national coalition of citizen leaders known as Americans United to Protect Social Security.
A decade ago he was one of the founders of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that looks at economics from the point of view of working Americans.
Mr. Hickey began his career in the 1960s as an organizer for the Virginia Students Civil Rights Committee and the Southern Students' Organizing Committee. In 1972 he went to work for Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam as a producer for the UNSELL THE WAR CAMPAIGN, a million dollar volunteer TV, radio, and print advertising campaign with creative and production labor donated by the advertising community on the West Coast.
In 1973 Mr. Hickey joined with others to help found the Public Media Center in San Francisco. As Media Director he coordinated production and media placement of TV, radio, print campaigns and conducted publicity efforts for consumer, labor, women's, and environmental groups. He won the first successful FCC ruling req
