The following statement is attributable to Héctor Figueroa, President of 32BJ SEIU:

“Universal health care is essential to the fight to achieve affordable health care for everyone in the United States, with no exceptions or loopholes.

“Recognizing that health care is a right and not a privilege will be central to making our health care system work. Since the election, people are rising up in record numbers to resist this administration’s attempts to repeal the safety net. That same momentum provides a real opportunity to also forge a path forward that shores up affordable, quality, healthcare for generations.

“If the debate around repealing the Affordable Care Act has taught us anything, it is that people want more, not less, access to health care. Repealing Medicare is the ‘third rail’ of American politics for a reason: the program is universal, efficient and saves millions of lives. Now is the time to move forward with universal health care to ensure that everyone has access to life-saving health care regardless of their ability to pay, citizenship status, age, gender or sexual orientation. We will continue the critical fight for health care access for our members and their families until health care is a right that is truly universal.”

The following resolution was passed today by the 32BJ SEIU Executive Board on September 13, 2017.

The Service Employees International Union first endorsed universal health care in 2016:
http://conventiondocs.seiu.org/resolutions-committee/

With 163,000 members in eleven states and Washington, D.C., 32BJ SEIU is the largest property service workers union in the country.