sign an e-card to celebrate the one-year anniversary of health care reform

The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum and their Health Through Action partners are celebrating the one-year anniversary of health care reform by delivering birthday cards to Members of Congress and they need your help.

You can sign a health care reform birthday card that will be delivered to Members of Congress on March 23, 2011 -- which marks one-year since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was enacted. Here's some more information:

Health care reform lowers the cost of health care, increases the number of health care providers, holds health insurance companies accountable, improves the quality of health care and extends health coverage to 32 million people. In this time of economic uncertainty and rising unemployment, health care reform provides much needed security to millions of Americans.

Health care reform will help provide health coverage to uninsured and underinsured Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AAs and NHPIs) while also enhancing the quality of care our communities receive by:

- providing an increase in funding to community health centers, which give affordable, high-quality preventive and primary health care to more than 18 million people in more than 7,000 communities nationwide.

- expanding the Medicaid program and creating new Health Insurance Exchanges to increase access to affordable, quality care for more individuals and families.

- expanding initiatives to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions and offering training grants for providers to strengthen their cultural competency.

- including provisions to increase the collection and reporting of data on race, ethnicity, and language. This will provide our policy makers, public health experts, local leaders and service providers with the necessary information to set priorities and allocate resources to address health disparities in our communities.

Sign an e-card and spread the word. They're trying to get 2000 signatures by Wednesday to deliver to Congress and the administration to say thank you for passing health care reform. For more information about the health care reform birthday celebration, go to the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum website here.