Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

CHICAGO -- From the streets of San Francisco on June 19th to the sidewalks of Washington, DC, on September 22nd and now on to the Magnificent Mile in Chicago on October 23rd, the nurses are making sure they spread the single payer message directly to the for-profit insurance company industry trade group, AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans), with more than 1,300 member insurance companies. 

In Chicago, like in DC, NNOC nurses joined with local single payer activists and those concerned about healthcare justice in hazmat suits and with caution tape to present a visual image of the dangerous insurance industry dealings that cause suffering and even death by injecting profit motive into the U.S. healthcare system.

Despite cold temperatures and the watchful eyes of several AHIP attendees, Dorothy Ahmad, RN, turned the heat up with a call for the end of the profit-taking middlemen in the healthcare system as James Thindwa from Chicago's Jobs With Justice holds the bullhorn and gets ready to declare the quarantine successful and Chicago safe from more damage done by those who would profit from denying care to sick Americans who trusted their insurance plans would keep them protected.

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.

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

It takes courage to stand up to the people who make money off the suffering of others when those same people bring loads of money and influence to every table they buy.

But there still are some courageous Americans -- and even some courageous Americans who are also elected officials.  Today in protest actions across the United States, citizens will stand side-by-side with some of those brave warriors of the people as we protest the private health insurance industry and its stranglehold on the American healthcare system.

From San Francisco to Louisville and from Philadelphia to San Antonio and in a dozen other cities, patients, nurses, doctors, activists, writers, lawyers, students, senior citizens, veterans, and politicians with guts will gather in solidarity against the inhumanity that places profits above human life and masquerades itself as protection against calamity -- and that imposter is the private health insurance industry. 

A city attorney from Los Angeles, a mayor from San Francisco, a state senator from Pittsburgh, a state representative from Chicago and other amazing truth-telling public officials stand unafraid to proclaim:  healthcare is a basic human right.