Guaranteed Healthcare

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.  

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: 

Does passage of a bill that funnels millions of additional Americans into the private insurance system, and the decision of House leaders to shut down debate on one single payer amendment and scuttle another, mean the end of the years of efforts by single payer activists to win the most comprehensive reform of all?

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.

By Donna Smith

Some old adages survive because they are true.  No matter how you deliver the message – email, snail mail, voice mail, text message or old-fashioned word-of-mouth – if you forget to keep it simple and keep it local, your issue or candidate will lose.

The right-wing went into high-wind to scare seniors – a huge voting block – about healthcare reform.  And why not?  All politics is local. 

Tell a senior citizen you are going to raise property taxes for new schools and it won’t matter for even a moment that the money is for their grandkids’ education – those seniors will vote no.  Ask any number of local or state candidates for office.  Seniors, more than any other voting block, vote their pocketbooks and vote their own immediate well-being.

Don’t get me wrong, I love older folks.  In fact I am getting to be one. 

By Donna Smith 

It’s 2009.  We’ve elected President Barack Obama.  We’ve elected a Democratic majority in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.  Those bastions of social policy are now in place to protect basic human rights.  Good things should be in the offing – at least we should make progress in the direction of more equity for women and their families and perhaps most especially for women of color.  Right? 

And we’ve declared that healthcare is a basic human right.  Women surely fall into the category deserving of equal access to basic human rights.  So far, so good.  Surely we’re setting ourselves on a course to expand more healthcare equity to women.  Surely it must be so.

But, alas, it’s not to be. 

Marilyn Clement,  June 30, 1935 – August 3, 2009

By Donna Smith

August 3, 2009 – Marilyn Clement, national coordinator for Healthcare-NOW, died this morning.  We mourn her loss.  She was an organizer for the ages, a friend, a mentor, and as of today, an angel.

Behind she leaves legions of single-payer healthcare activists who may not even know her name or her background or her struggle but who carry with them her passion for a just world where every human life is valued and protected and honored no matter his or her station in life, gender, color of skin, or name recognition potential.  In a world gone mad for celebrity and status, Marilyn was a woman of peace and compassion for all.

I first met Marilyn when SiCKO premiered in New York City.  Then just weeks later when I introduced the film to audiences at the Atlanta Social Forum, it was Marilyn who took me across town to a hotel room where Laura Flanders had set up a radio studio to broadcast all the action at the event.  Marilyn brought me to be on the radio show with her – and with Atlanta’s Dr. Henry Kahn.   Diane Shamis of Progressive Democrats of America will recall that interview too.

By Donna Smith

I feel something coming on in this country.  Our healthcare reform effort is catching a bit of a cold.  Actually it’s a virus.  The Blue Dog and the Blue Blood flu.  And this flu bug will kill far more people than the swine flu or the bird flu.

Here’s how we got sick…

Way back in the fall during the campaign season, we had great hope for an Obama administration that seemed to understand very clearly that healthcare is a human right.  Then came the declarations of the new administration and the promises from Congress.  We’ll get it done this year, they said.  And because we all know thousands of American lives hang in the balance every month, we believed they meant to end the suffering and many of our leaders probably did intend to act.

But the bailout for Wall Street came first.  Then more money flowed to the financial markets.  And more money still.  The work on healthcare reform was held back a bit as the economy’s failing and ailing was first in line for action.

By Donna Smith

There were no reports in the media Tuesday about the four United States Senators who voted for a bit of sanity today in the midst of the complexity of the race to reform healthcare in the United States.  Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio all voted to allow individual states the right to pass and implement publicly funded, privately delivered single payer healthcare programs, if they should choose to do so.

But the other Senators on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee didn’t want to support the amendment to the health reform legislation.  Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico was perhaps the most vocal in his opposition to the state single payer enabling amendment as he argued that he felt those Americans happy with their coverage through private or some of the public plans would not want to face a change to a single payer system.