For more than a decade, SEIU members have been fighting for quality, affordable health care for all. In 2003, we launched the Americans for Health Care campaign and began educating, training and organizing around health care issues in battleground states. We identified more than 600,000 health care voters in key states, including Iowa, New Hampshire and Colorado.

In 2007 and 2008, our Healthcare United campaign mobilized more than one million health care professionals - doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and more - in support of health care reform. And throughout this period, SEIU members have led state and workplace efforts to improve access to and delivery of quality health care.

Last November, our members helped elect President Barack Obama on a pledge that health care reform would be a top priority for his administration. Soon afterward, we launched our Change that Works campaign - a multi-state campaign with targeted field, new media, communications and lobbying on key worker issues, including health care reform. After ten years of focused work on this issue, this weekend's passage of the House health care bill is a moment we should celebrate.

Take a look at some of the highlights in this historic legislation:

Coverage Expansion

• Requires most employers (employers with a payroll of more than $500,000) to provide employees with health insurance, or make an insurance contribution on their behalf, starting in 2013.
  
• Requires most people to obtain health care coverage beginning in 2013.
  
• Allows children up to 27 years of age to remain on their parents' health care policies.

More Choices in Health Care Coverage

• Creates a federal health insurance exchange in 2013. Individuals and employers can purchase insurance on the exchange.
  
• Establishes a public health insurance option within the insurance exchange by 2013.
  
• Breaks up the insurance company cabal by repealing the blanket antitrust exemption for health insurers. This is expected to lead to more competition.

Encouraging Small Businesses to Cover Employees

• Provides tax credits for certain small businesses that offer health insurance to their employees.

Ending Abuse by Insurers

• Bars insurance companies from denying, changing or reducing coverage based on "pre-existing conditions." This does not go into effect until 2013. In the meantime, it restricts how long insurers can continue to limit coverage for a "pre-existing condition" (only 30 days - in other words, if you have a "pre-existing condition" and wanted a new insurance policy, the insurance company can only look back 30 days into your medical history).
  
• Prohibits companies from considering domestic violence to be a "pre-existing condition."
  
• You'll no longer be told by a health care provider, "Sorry, but you've reached your annual cap. Your insurer will not pay for this procedure." This bill prohibits insurance companies from offering policies with annual or lifetime spending caps.
  
• Bans "gender rating" whereby insurers unfairly charge women up to 48% more than men for the same health insurance policies.
  
• Guarantees no out-of-pocket costs for preventive care, and limits annual expenses to $5,000 for individuals, $10,000 for a family.
  
• Requires all qualified health benefits plans to provide coverage that meets or exceeds an "essential benefits package," which includes maternity care, well-baby and well-child care, mental health and substance use disorder services, prescription drugs, and hospitalization.

Unfortunately, the bill also included an amendment offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) that, according to Huffington Post, "potentially goes farther than any other federal law to restrict women's access to abortion." Read more about this amendment, here.

SEIU is committed to women's reproductive health, and we'll be working to see that any harmful language on women's health issues does not appear in any final health care bill. That work begins with ensuring that the U.S. Senate doesn't take up a similar amendments that distract us from the real work of fixing health care.