Guaranteed Healthcare

Survey research suggests that, while Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of health-care reform, they are not sure the reform cobbled together by President Obama and the last Congress is the proper fix. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, the country is divided three ways [1]: 33 percent for complete repeal of the measure adopted last year, 35 percent for partial repeal and 30 percent for no repeal. 

By Donna Smith

Ah, we must be more civil.  No more taunts.  No more tirades.  No more gun crosshair targets, no matter how innocently placed on our graphics (though I am not sure gun crosshairs are ever really innocent in placement).  We’ll be more civil in our discourse.  In light of the tragedy in Tucson. Maybe. 

But stand at the front desks in a hospital admissions area or a doctor’s office or at other providers’ offices and civility is the last thing we’ll know.  We can be sick – shaking with fever, bending over in pain, bandaged for wounds, chest aching with unknown agony, and the questions and responses will be anything but civil.  “What insurance do you have?  Where’s your co-payment today?  Is that a check, debit or credit card?  Do you have a picture ID?  Have you signed our legal forms and signed our privacy forms?” 

And if you make it through all of that, you may still not receive the kind of care needed to make you feel better or even save your life.  You may sit waiting for a doctor who may or may not treat you based on what an external organization or agency says you are entitled to receive.  The doctor may be annoyed that you are in his or her care instead of farmed out to another specialist.  If you do find yourself referred for a test or another doctors’ visit, you’ll start the process all over again from the beginning.  Co-pay paid?  Insurance in order?  Credit or debit card?  Picture ID?

The Saralee and Carol Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to helping women with cancer get treatment when health insurance delays or denies it, is in the running for a $50,000 grant in the Pepsi Refresh program - but needs your vote to win!

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. 

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: 

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

Wow.  America’s Health insurance Plan’s  (AHIP) czar -- and the woman our Congress and president have anointed as the nation’s architect of health reform -- has offered a gift to all of America’s moms and women.  The health insurance industry will stop charging you more – they’ll stop discriminating against you – so long as all of you are legally forced to buy their product.

It sounds to me a little like the old saw, “When did you stop beating your wife?” But then when I really thought about it, it made me sicker and sadder and more acutely aware of exactly what this nation’s leaders think of all of the mothers and daughters in the land this Mother’s Day 2009.