Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

Sometimes, Washington, DC, can be a pretty stuffy place.  It’s not just all the business suits and the clickety-clack of high-heels down the marble hallways as staffers rush to and fro doing the bidding of their Congressional members.  It’s not just the daily drone of anemic cries for civility from both sides of the political aisle  in the midst of economic recession, planet endangering climate change, the latest corporate contamination in the Gulf or on Wall Street or in our healthcare system.  It’s just stuffy here much of the time.  The people are often as dead serious as the issues.

But this week, during National Nurses Week, the stuffiness lifted.  A rush of light, fresh, clean and energizing energy came to DC clad in 1,000 bright red scrubs worn by the registered nurses of National Nurses United and their affiliate unions, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, United American Nurses, and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals. 

By Donna Smith

We Americans like to bomb moms.  Whether it’s in a far away country where we send our children to kill other mothers and their children or whether it’s here at home where we drop economic and cultural and sexist bombs on moms, we definitely like to bomb moms.

Then we like to show the First Lady tearfully honoring her own mother from a position of power and privilege in beautiful party dresses in a china and lace-draped dining room in the White House– like a well choreographed ballet of national proof one day every year that we love our mothers.   Doesn’t really matter which First Lady we chat about here.  Each of them plays their dutiful role in the annual Mother’s Day dance of pride. 

Inasmuch as the national healthcare reform effort did not produce a result that will provide the basic human right to healthcare to all in the United States, the work of reaching that goal remains ahead. Those of us who support a single-payer system as the only way to assure true universality for healthcare rights have not stopped our work following the passage of national health insurance reform. And many of us working on single-payer are doing so in our individual states rather than waiting for a national resolution to the escalating health crisis in the United States.

(Link directly to and sign Declaration of Health Independence and Security, before reading more: http://pdamerica.e-actionmax.com/takeaction.asp?aaid=4651)

In Wayne, Pennsylvania, on April 10, 2010, in conjunction with a regional conference of the Progressive Democrats of America, citizen representatives of 14 states gathered and decided to begin a more coordinated collaboration aimed at passage of state-based, single-payer health reform legislation. An additional four states expressed interest in moving forward with the shared collaboration between states.  

By Donna Smith

When you see the faces of the members of PASNAP (Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals) on strike at Temple University Hospital and perhaps most especially when you see the faces of their children walking on the picket line with them, you embrace the reality of why these brave RNs and other health professionals were compelled to strike.  This strike is about providing the best possible care for the patients at Temple and doing so in a way that is supported by the health professionals who have given decades of service to the community and to the institution. (story and ACTION item continued next page)

By Donna Smith

PHILADELPHIA – “Should I care if someone else is being exploited?” asked Kate Harkins, 21, of Schuylkill County, PA, who is a junior majoring in American Studies at Temple.  “If we don’t stand up for those workers now, then down the road when we are workers, conditions will not be changed, and we will not be heard.”

As the bells on campus tolled just after noon on Wednesday, protesting students walked to Bell Tower Plaza along Polett Walk with T-shirts that read, “My nurse was a scab,” and they staged a die-in to protest worker exploitation.  Students from Temple University’s Student Labor Action Project said they held the protest in support of the striking nurses and health professionals at Temple University hospital just two subway stops up the Broad Ave – Orange Line from the tree lined campus where they study.

By Donna Smith

PHILADELPHIA -- Well, it wasn’t an Easter parade coming through Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, but it was a march by striking registered nurses and other Temple University Hospital health professionals that included lots of kids and family members deferring the activities that usually mark the spring holiday weekend.

On the fourth day of the strike by the 1,500 members of the PASNAP (Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals) bargaining unit at Temple, nurses with decades of service at the hospital vowed to continue their strike “as long as it takes” to get a fair contract and to be able to be the most effective patient advocates possible. 

The PASNAP marchers made their way through the historic square adjacent to the luxury condominium home of Ann Weaver Hart, Temple’s CEO, who according to an early 2010 report in the Chronicle of Higher Education earns more than $602,000 annually but who is, according to the nurses, key architect of the plan to bust their union and avoid giving nurses the freedom to advocate for their patients and the fair benefits and compensation they deserve.  The nurses have been working without a contract since last September while Hart’s current contract assures her of not only one of the highest salaries in the nation for university presidents but also grants her a car, a house and $75,000 in deferred compensation.

By Donna Smith

A transplant doctor steps into the crowd of picketing nurses and other health professionals at Temple and says how much he hopes this is all over soon.  “I just cannot transplant anyone this way,” he shares. No one takes any pleasure in his statement, but another RN asks him about a patient she was caring for when the strike began just three days ago.  “He’s doing OK,” says the doctor who seems to know the nurse needs some reassurance. “His left lung is, well, he’s doing OK.”  The moment of shared concern for the patient passes as the doctor squeezes the nurse’s arm then moves on and the nurse returns to the picket line.

The strike by the 1500 nurses, healthcare professional and technical employees at Temple University Hospital began this Wednesday morning, so this is day three for the members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals union, PASNAP.

Undaunted: Movement for Improved Medicare for All Grows in Illinois and Across the Nation

By Donna Smith

Just blocks from President Obama's Hyde Park home south of the Loop in Chicago, more than 70 activists gathered on Saturday, March 27, 2010, to plan strategy for advancing an improved and expanded Medicare for all system as the law of the land.  Activists across the nation are undaunted by the passage of the current health reform bill as they know that mandating the purchase of private insurance is not the same as providing access to healthcare.

Joining the activists from throughout Illinois was Illinois State Representative Mary Flowers, chief sponsor of Illinois' single-payer health reform bill HB311, seen in the photo on the left.

By sharing their successes in advancing the Medicare for all, single-payer position, the activists spent eight hours together, broke into issue panels and came away with the formation of four task forces to explore the most effective and strategic ways to move the movement in Illinois both in terms of state legislative energy and as part of a larger national movement. 

By Donna Smith

So, it’s a new day in America, the Dem’s leadership proclaims-- I’m to believe that just like the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, this healthcare bill will bring long-term and profound changes to the broken healthcare system in ways that will make me more able to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Wow.  Tall order.

But if I reject that view of the bill and bounce over to the crude and unintelligible ranting coming from the political right, this bill spells the end of American life as we know it.  No more mom and apple pie with this bill, the Repubs assert.  This is a communist plot and orchestrated by non-white, non-Christian America haters.  Equally wow.

I think the truth about this bill’s passage can be more easily measured by looking at some of the patient stories featured in Michael Moore’s documentary, SiCKO, about the healthcare system and seeing how those patients would do under the new law of the land (the Dem’s view) as opposed to how they did and are doing under the current system (the Repub’s preference).

By Donna Smith

Surreal. I am writing this while in a hematology/oncology office in Maryland. The fact that I’m writing an essay while receiving treatment and have done two conference calls and all my work today is mind-boggling in itself and speaks to the very real world many patients navigate every day now. If we are lucky enough to access care having run the gauntlet of our insurance companies and providers, we then must negotiate the time to care for ourselves. The patient “beltway” is very entrenched.

But this week, I’ve seen so much contradiction inside the more traditionally titled DC beltway and in my state’s seat of power, Annapolis, that my mind is swimming with images and conflicting energies.

One news report on the week: http://community.myvoa.com/_US-Congress-Waging-Fierce-Final-Battle-over-Health-Care-Reform/VIDEO/951198/45137.html?widgetId=294438&widgetID=1001 

-- read more on the next page --

By Donna Smith

It has been an odd week for those of us who believe in an end to war and also believe in a progressively financed single standard of high quality care for all. 

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio spearheaded an historic debate and vote on the House floor on Afghanistan war funding and then also announced he would vote “yes” on the current health reform bill he finds so flawed.  News reports on both issues are plentiful so no need to expound on the details again here, but the process in Washington, DC, is bruising and citizen activists are sometimes left confused.

But make no mistake, the deep convictions of those advocating “Healthcare Not Warfare” is growing in an ever-increasing wave of Brown Bag Vigils held on the third Wednesday of every month outside Congressional offices from coast-to-coast.  On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, the number of vigils swelled to 89. 

In Washington, DC, the media turned out to film the Brown Bag team assembled across from the Rayburn House Office Building but seemed more interested in stirring anger toward Kucinich or toward the President or Congress or certainly toward the Tea Party efforts that the mainstream media has done so much to promote and encourage by its intense coverage since the dog days of summer when one right-wing screamer chased a Congressman across a parking lot following a town hall meeting. 

Some patient stories just fill me with anger and shame.  This one -- from Iowa -- is one of those stories.  By now, we all know the plot.  Patient has insurance.  Patient gets sick.  Patient cannot afford to keep insurance or find insurance that will cover illness.  Patient goes without coverage.  Providers demand up-front payment for cancer care.  Patient calls on friends, family and community to help.  Patient grovels.  Cancer spreads.  Patient grovels.

Ah, the mid-western values.  This is Iowa.  My mom was born in Boone during the Great Depression.  Iowa is the place many think of when we think of those salt-of-the-earth, kind and hard-working Americans with traditional, perhaps even faith-based values.  A kind and gentle place with a no-nonsense work-ethic.  Iowa.  Fields of farmers' dreams and the stuff of mid-America at its finest.

So, why in Iowa should we allow Deb, (continued below)

By Donna Smith

So, all the great fanfare and all the king’s horses.  The great and almighty U.S. Senate has spoken.  I will have to buy private health insurance – forever, amen.  The defective product that has left me wanting for real healthcare for all of my adult life is now a step closer to being the law of the land.

A lump of Christmas coal all polished up with sparkling rhetoric. 

Here’s what the Chicago Tribune said this week, and I agree: 

By Donna Smith

Jenny Fritts was 24 years old.  Jenny lived with her husband Sean for the past five years, and together they had a little girl named Kylee, 2. Jenny was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child – a beautiful, baby girl. 

Jenny is dead.  Jenny’s unborn baby is dead.  They died because they were turned away for appropriate care at a for-profit hospital because they did not have health insurance.  Sean rushed Jenny back to another hospital when her symptoms became even more severe, and he lied about having insurance to get her in the door. She was placed on a respirator in intensive care, but she didn’t make it.  She died.  And so did her baby.

They become two more of the more than 45,000 Americans who die preventable deaths due to our broken healthcare system every year.  Two more.  Mother and child. 

By Donna Smith

This story is not unlike millions that play out in a similar fashion all over this nation.  For-profit, private insurance companies practice medicine without apology – and without license to do so.  Patients seek care; doctors assess medical needs; private insurance companies make the final choice.  My insurance company – Blue Cross -- decided just yesterday that doctors at one of the finest medical facilities in this nation were wrong in what they prescribed for me. 

Yet if we listen to the plans unfolding on the national political scene, we are supposed to trust that the private, for-profit insurers – like Blue Cross – will clean up their acts over the next few years rather than “trigger” the availability of a public health plan option for all Americans.  As far as I am concerned, their decades of escalating abuses against patients and healthcare providers are trigger enough – they do not deserve five more years to decide if they’ll do what it is right.  We know they will not.