title: Linking grassroots leadership and legal advocacy: partnerships for health care justice.
abstract: Every community has suffered its bout of health care turmoil.  HMOs that suddenly announce they're dropping Medicare plans for seniors.  Prescription drug costs that soar unabated.  Increasing numbers of people without insurance despite a booming economy.  Hospital shutdowns.  News that the Blue Cross plan, long a community institution, is going for-profit. Because such changes affect us all, consumers must be at the table when decisions about the health care system get made.  The need to strengthen the consumer voice--to institutionalize that voice and make it more effective--is prompting many consumer advocates to partner with attorneys.  This States of Health looks at such partnerships and their tremendous potential for protecting consumers--and for achieving the broader goal of health care justice.
mesh_terms: D003254:Consumer Advocacy; D003255:Consumer Organizations / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D007857:Leadership; D017057:Medically Uninsured / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D014481:United States