A Pennsylvania legal organization is pushing to ensure federal health care reform covers all Pennsylvania residents, saying people have a faulty perception of the uninsured.

The group, Pennsylvania Health Law Project, released a report seeking to alter the perception of those lacking insurance in the state.

The report, Uninsured Pennsylvania, profiles eight people who lack health insurance, but not because they are poor. The 28-page report was prepared by Dr. Gene Bishop for the nonprofit law firm, based in Philadelphia, Pa., that provides legal assistance to low-income individuals and advocates for reforms and improvements to the public health care system.

“Often, the uninsured are made out to be poor, lazy, unemployed, homeless, and irresponsible. In other words, not like us,” Bishop said in a statement. “The opposite is true.”

The report is released as Congress continues to weigh alternatives for federal health reform, including calls for a single-payer system or other approaches to ensure that all Americans have coverage.

About 90% of the 1.3 million uninsured people in Pennsylvania go to work or live in a household where someone goes to work, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Often they are not offered health insurance at work or the coverage offered is too expensive to buy, according to the nonpartisan CBO.

Laval Miller-Wilson, the project’s executive director, said in a statement that the report is designed to explain “the uninsured are our neighbors, living every day with illness and fear – fear of getting sicker, fear of losing their homes due to unpaid medical bills, fear of acknowledging a serious health problem only to be faced with the staggering costs of treatment.”