Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, communications specialist, CNA/NNOC

CHICAGO --  Last week, Americans gathered all around the country to protest the for-profit, health insurance industry which has turned our healthcare system into their own little playground of greed and graft.  In San Francisco, thousands gathered.  In other cities, hundreds, and in still more, scores of people cared enough to stand up and speak out for healthcare justice.

I am home in Chicago now.  And I am reflecting on an incredible week for the single payer healthcare movement. One incident at the close of the San Francisco protest event will be etched in my mind and others' minds who saw it for a very long time.

I walked slowly along one shaded wall at the Moscone Center in San Francisco with a few of our nurses -- we were all pretty hot but very happy to have been a part of this protest. We sipped water and waited patiently as the crowd broke up.

We noticed a tiny, elderly woman who was hunched over, carrying her protest sign and shuffling quietly along the windows of the Moscone Center.  Inside the convention center, some of the insurance company groupies were sitting in the air-conditioned lobby, sipping sodas and other cool drinks and watching the protest break up outside.

Throughout the protest, a few of the for-profit, health insurance lovers had watched and even snickered or laughed at the protests while others had just stopped and taken a cell phone photo or two. But as the protest was breaking up, more of the AHIP (American Health Insurance Plans) conference attendees were arriving and settling in.

I looked over through the windows wondering still about the suspension of the soul that must take place for some of these people to put profits ahead of people in their day-to-day working lives.  I studied faces and was angry when I saw a snide smile or a cocky look shared between business-suited execs who bury their humanity beneath layers of self-righteousness and yuppified style. 

But then I caught the glimpse of a young man in a business suit staring out the window.  He looked to be about 30 or so, and he was by himself.  He looked at the old woman shuffling by with her protest sign.  He sized up this tiny warrior and looked at her face.

And then he winced.  He winced and then put his face down in his hands, just momentarily -- until a colleague walked up and distracted him from his launch into his moment of conscience.

A nurse I was walking with looked at me, and we both acknowledged that we saw that wince.  That wince of a young man who knew what he does for a living is somehow contributing to that frail, older woman's need to protest in the streets of San Francisco on a hot afternoon with little shade.

That was a moment of great hope for me and for our nurse who shared it with me.  We chatted briefly before parting about the young people we need to reach with the simple message that every human being deserves healthcare.  

Of all the striking images of that day, that simple moment of shared humanity will remain in my memory as one of the most important.  We touched a soul.  We changed a heart.  We moved this message forward.  One monumental step at a time...