Congresswoman Dean Avoids Healthcare Reform Debate Accepts Thousands in Campaign Donations from For Profit Health Insurers

NORRISTOWN, Pa., April 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of area labor unions plans to picket the Norristown office of Pennsylvania Representative Madeleine Dean in protest of her lack of response to multiple requests for a meeting. The coalition of 25 unions sent a letter to Dean and all other area representatives last August urging her to cosponsor new legislation that would enroll all those people left uninsured into Medicare for the duration of the pandemic.

Of the three area Congresspersons contacted only Dean ignored their request for a meeting.

As the pandemic crisis continued the group followed up with Congresswoman Dean's office six months later, in March of this year, to again push for a meeting on the health care question. She again failed to respond. Some in the group are not surprised "Follow the money" said Jed Dodd "she's taken almost $90,000 in campaign donations from the insurance industry and over $13,000 from Blue Cross/Blue Shield last year alone." Dodd serves as the Vice President of the BMWED Division of the Teamsters and sits on the Coordinating Committee for the group organizing the picket.

Others in the group say her silence on the health care question is telling: "Representative Dean is an outspoken advocate for many good causes" says David McMahon a member of IATSE Local 52 and delegate for the Montgomery County Central Labor Council "but when it comes to health care reform she lets Big Business do all the talking. We couldn't even get her to meet with us on the Healthcare Emergency Guarantee Act in the middle of a pandemic."

The group plans to picket Dean's office with information regarding Medicare expansion and single-payer health care reform on April 29th.

SOURCE Philadelphia Area Unions for Medicare for All