Anxious about paying for the health care you need? No wonder. Health care costs continue to climb, and most companies are requiring employees to pay a larger and larger share. Many of us worry that we won't be able to pay all our medical bills following a major illness or injury.

The Cover America Tour, sponsored by Consumer Reports Health, will roam the country this summer, putting faces on the flaws in our broken health care system. At every stop, we'll videotape Americans talking about the challenges they've experienced getting the affordable, high quality health care they need.

We want to make sure that politicians promoting solutions listen to your voice, not just the voices of the big money lobbyists representing the health care industry.

Visit www.CoverAmericaTour.org to follow the tour, check out videos about the people we're meeting, and tell us your own health care experience.

The journey to real health care reform starts with you!

Our Team on the RV:

Like the route itself, the Cover America Tour
crew hails from all corners of the country.

Meg Bohne (bottom right) is a Campaign Organizer based in Consumers Union’s San Francisco office who works on health care and prescription drug issues. A seasoned community activist, advocate and organizer, Meg has come to specialize in on-the-road campaigns in vehicles that have spanned a bus, an ambulance and, now, an RV. She is joined by Blake Hutson (upper right) who is taking the summer off from his graduate studies to work as an organizer for the tour. From Austin, Texas, Blake’s background includes international development work in the South American country of Guyana. Multimedia for the tour is produced by Pauline Bartolone (upper left), a radio journalist who fell in love with video and photography at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. She thought reporting from several Latin American countries was a trip. She can’t wait to Cover America!

About Consumers Union

Consumers Union (CU) is an expert, independent, nonprofit organization, whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers. CU publishes Consumer Reports and ConsumerReports.org in addition to two newsletters, Consumer Reports on Health and Consumer Reports Money Adviser with combined subscriptions of more than 7 million. Consumers Union also has more than 500,000 online activists who help work to change legislation and the marketplace in favor of the consumer interest. Since its founding in 1936, Consumers Union has never taken any advertising or freebies of any kind. The organization generates more than $160 million in revenue and a staff of more than 500 work at either CU's 50 state-of-the-art labs in Yonkers, NY; its 327-acre auto test facility in East Haddam, CT.; or the three advocacy offices in Washington DC, Austin, TX, and San Francisco, CA.

Read the history of Consumers Union and Consumer Reports.

About Consumer Reports Health

Why did Consumer Reports create a Web site about health decisions?

For more than 70 years, Consumers Union, the nation's expert, independent, nonprofit consumer organization, has been working for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and empowering consumers to protect themselves. We're a leading advocate for patient safety, health-care quality and effectiveness, and affordable health coverage for all.

Our trusted research, testing, and reporting on health topics–always free of advertising and commercial or government influence–appears regularly in Consumer Reports magazine, ConsumerReports.org, and our other media products. From advice on how to choose an over-the-counter pain reliever to selecting a health insurer, we have a long history of informing consumers about health-care products and services.

As consumers become increasingly involved in their own health decisions and turn to the Web for answers to their questions, they need unbiased, accurate, evidence-based information to compare their options and to make appropriate choices for themselves and their families. Informed choices lead to better health outcomes, lower costs, and improved value.

In response to this need, Consumer Reports launched ConsumerReportsHealth.org. ConsumerReportsHealth.org offers Consumers Union's rich array of research and recommendations about health care and healthy living on one continuously updated Web site. Our goal is to answer your pressing questions–from which diet plan is rated the best to cost-effective alternatives to your prescription drugs–and to help you make better health-care decisions.