About CCMP
Welcome
For more than 50 years, CCMP has been forging a new path in healthcare, uniting doctors, nurses, home health aides and others concerned about the state of the U.S. healthcare system. Today we have a system that is on a steady decline in its dismal outcomes for patients, yet on an unabated incline in its head-spinning returns for investors in the $5 trillion healthcare-industrial complex. Without paid staff or government funding, CCMP has delivered millions of dollars of free-of-charge services through volunteer participation. The time for healthcare action is NOW and we urgently need your help to expand!
OUR MISSION
Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals (CCMP) was founded in 1973 as an effort to advance the just cause of Long Island’s farm workers, who labored at low pay with no health benefits. We grew as the fight for comprehensive healthcare grew in metropolitan New York, Long Island and nationwide.
Grassroots
For over 50 years, we have remained independent and free of government or strings-attached funding. CCMP is structured as a free and voluntary unincorporated private membership association. CCMP’s primary purpose is to overcome political and economic barriers that deny access to comprehensive healthcare for any and all working people. This has included conducting campaigns to defeat laws or government policies detrimental to the interests of low-paid workers.
Health insurance ≠ healthcare
Government policies leave poor and working class people a “choice” — skyrocketing co-pays and deductibles they cannot afford, or no coverage at all. Health insurance does not equal healthcare. CCMP’s program is based on the principle that everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, must have access to comprehensive healthcare.
Aiding low-income workers
CCMP volunteers aid service workers, independent contractors, part-time workers, farm workers, owners of small businesses and others without affordable access to preventive healthcare. By fighting denials of care and advocating to expunge medical debt, volunteers also ensure, in as many cases as we can, that even those with insurance can access the care they need and aren’t forced to choose between medical bills and other necessary expenses.
A call to health professionals of principle
The ancient physicians Maimonides and Hippocrates both said that the most important health ethic is the professional’s obligation to see that healthcare is available to all who need it. Health professionals cannot fight for this on their own and those who are denied care cannot solve that problem on their own. That is why we are building organization, because through organization we can fight for solutions.
Over 50 Years of Victories
Our History
In 1973, CCMP grew out of efforts to organize farm, and other low-paid unrecognized workers in Suffolk County, New York, spearheaded by Eastern Farm Workers Association. Farm workers in Suffolk County were then dying at an average age of 41 years old as a result of poverty, occupational health hazards as well as lack of access to healthcare.
Today, in the U.S., farm workers only live to an average age of 49. As the needs of farm workers and other low-paid workers grew, CCMP’s first office was formally established in Riverhead, New York in 1973. CCMP subsequently moved to Brooklyn in 1998.
LIFE EXPECTANCY
49 YEARS
the average life expectancy of a farm worker in the U.S. in the 21st century.
VOLUNTEER POWER
100%
CCMP is 100% volunteer, with no paid staff.
ORGANIZING EXPERIENCE
50 YEARS
CCMP has more than five decades of successful organizing experience.
FIGHTING FOR COMPREHENSIVE HEALTHCARE
CCMP Members
CCMP’s members — healthcare professionals and allied social service workers — are now nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce, the largest and fastest growing sector of the economy.
Healthcare professionals, whether in private practice, clinics or hospitals, are increasingly unable to provide care to working people who need it the most as healthcare facilities remain grossly understaffed.
CCMP makes it possible for those who join as members to participate in and build a comprehensive approach to alleviating the causes of ill health for low-paid workers and their families.
DELIVERING FOR PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH
Our Benefit Program
CCMP’s preventive medical benefit program stands as an example of how much could be accomplished if we had a healthcare system that made services and resources available to those most in need, and did not deny access to healthcare due to one’s income or age. CCMP’s benefit program incorporates preventive medical care, ancillary health services, procurement of healthy food and joins with organizations of low-paid workers whose members suffer lack of access to quality, affordable care.
CCMP’s benefit program is based on the principle that everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, must have access to comprehensive healthcare.
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Father Gunthorpes (left) honored by CCMP volunteer organizer Patrick Elizalde (right) at CCMP’s Evening of Tribute.
Father Alexander Gunthorpes
The fact that CCMP members and volunteers devote their time, effort and energy to meet the healthcare needs of people who often do not have the time, courage or whatever it takes to fight, is amazing to me. That’s why I do what I can to help CCMP move forward.
—CCMP Board of Directors Member since 2012