COALITION OF CONCERNED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS (CCMP) is a free and voluntary, unincorporated, private membership association of healthcare professionals, working along with low-income workers, students and concerned residents throughout Sacramento County to fight for a comprehensive approach to the healthcare needs of all workers and their families, regardless of ability to pay. CCMP, through its independent all-volunteer approach, is committed to alleviating the plight of low-income workers, the poor, the uninsured and underinsured and anyone without access to quality medical care. Participation in CCMP is open to all who desire to see a deprived segment of the population gain access to comprehensive health care, which goes beyond any specific medical treatments to removing the obstacles that affects a persons’ ability to be well and stay well.

CCMP accepts no government funding nor any funding that would threaten our ability to fight to end current government policy that deprives certain sectors of the population access to health care. Establishing access to comprehensive medical care for all workers requires changing the policies that presently deny such care. CCMP cherishes its independence and ability to fight those policies. For that reason, CCMP does not seek tax-exempt status. CCMP exists only though the material support of our membership.

CCMP was founded in 1977 by volunteer physicians and nurses who joined together with state-contracted attendant care workers to oppose reductions in the time allocated for personal care and household chores such as bathing and meal preparation – vital services which allowed the poor, elderly, blind and disabled to live safely in their homes. Attendant care workers (then and now) typically work two and three jobs in different homes due to their very low wages and are exposed to dangerous and back-breaking working conditions, such as lifting disabled people to bathe them or transfer them in and out of bed. At the time CCMP was founded in Sacramento, attendant care workers were not eligible for Workers Compensation nor did they have any medical coverage, sick pay, transportation costs, or relief workers through their employment.

The high prevalence of chronic and acute diseases among attendant care and service workers is directly related to their economic condition. Both living and working conditions are major factors in causing initial illness, delaying its treatment and frequently resulting in its recurrence. Inadequate wages, housing, sanitation, food and heat are economic determinants of disease for all poor people. Additionally, they face the occupational hazards of unsafe or non-existent equipment, dangerous chemicals and unhealthy working conditions.

Sacramento’s service workers are not alone in their struggle for adequate healthcare: nationwide 80 million Americans have no medical coverage and more each year are being forced into the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured by the loss of jobs and benefits, corporate downsizing, union concessions or multi-national companies relocating jobs abroad. At the same time, federal and state governments have reduced eligibility and cut funding for public-funded health services. Millions of Americans cannot afford their insurance co-payments. These workers and their families commonly forgo routine doctor visits, too often with deadly outcomes.

CCMP organizes a free-of-charge preventive medical and non-emergency dental benefit available to the membership of organizations of low-income workers and others in Sacramento County, while at the same time fighting for a comprehensive approach to their health care needs. CCMP coordinates its work under the criteria and direction of the Sacramento County Workers Benefit Council, a delegate body representing the membership of low-income worker organizations including service workers, in-home attendant care workers, housekeepers, domestic workers, temporary workers, seasonal workers and their families.

Hospitals, labs and pharmacies donate vitally needed services and treatments to CCMP. Supportive businesses donate resources ranging from printing to car repairs and nutritious food to medications. CCMP teaches lay medical advocates to work together with volunteer medical professionals and CCMP benefit recipients to develop treatment plans and to garner all of the resources needed for those plans. This includes recruiting specialists, labs and pharmacies to carry out the plan of action for each CCMP benefit recipient who would otherwise have no access to preventive care.

CCMP is a vehicle for people of principle to take a stand for the elimination of any and all political and economic barriers to good health, including campaigns to defeat laws and government policies detrimental to the interests of the low-income community. Previous attempts to organize medical care for the lowest-income population – such as government clinics and alternative clinics – have either been insufficient or failed, either because they compromised their principles and acquiesced to functioning under government dictate or because they came under attack by the government for their refusal to do so. Government medical aid programs have, in effect, created a two-tiered system of heath care provision and an assembly-line approach that contradicts the ethics of the health care profession and works in opposition to the concept of continuity of care and preventive services. Clearly a new approach to the practice and delivery system of medicine is called for.

CCMP is opposed to all forms of “Death Squad Medicine” – a term coined by CCMP when California’s neighboring state of Oregon petitioned the federal government for the first waiver from federal standards stipulated in Title 19 of the Social Security Act. Oregon sought and finally gained legal permission to ration healthcare to the poor, thereby allowing the state the legal ability to deny whole categories of health services to the neediest segment of the population. Oregon enacted this policy into state law setting a dangerous precedent for our nation. Death Squad Medicine takes many forms, and includes policies of managed healthcare corporations that deny lifesaving care in order to increase their profit margins at the poor’s expense.

CCMP urgently needs full-time and part-time volunteers to join with those most in need of redress from current public and corporate policies that deny essential health services. CCMP publishes a newsletter – Vital Signs – to provide CCMP’s constituencies with the facts and analysis not available though the mainstream press. We need more writers, design volunteers and printers to join the newsletter production staff.