Guaranteed Healthcare

The idea of a Medicare for All type, single-payer healthcare system will be heard on the Senate floor.  Late last evening, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed Senate Amendment No. 2837, and there are two additional original co-sponsors of this amendment, Senator Roland Burris of Illinois and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

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. 

There's a fundamental lesson in collective bargaining that seems to have been lost on the White House, and those in Congress who devised their failing strategy on healthcare reform:

Don't make all your compromises before you walk in the room.

For all those now wringing their hands over the apparent abandonment of the public option and like Rachel Maddow  dissecting the train wreck of the once promising opportunity for genuine healthcare reform, it's time to ask:  what happened? who could have foreseen that semi barreling down the highway? and what do we do now?

Well, it's Sunday afternoon, and after working four consecutive 12+ hour day shifts in the ICU last week, taking care of the sickest, most vulnerable patients imaginable, I'll confess to being a bit tired and weary.  At home, I've begun sorting piles of laundry, and collecting the coffee cups that never seem to find their own way into the dishwasher.  MSNBC's Meet the Press is broadcasting in the background, and my boxer, Ginger, is dogging my heels and hinting that she'd really like to go for a walk to the park sometime today.   

My mind begins to wander back to some of the more poignant and intriguing memories of the past week. Yesterday afternoon three of my colleagues and I stood by with a 93 year old patient who was taking her last peaceful breaths less than 12 hours after her friends and family had prayed for her and said their last good-byes.  We watched her heart beat slow and then stop as her spirit left her body. We silenced and finally disconnected the monitor alarms that confirmed what we already knew.  She'd suffered a massive stroke just a few days after Christmas, and her family agreed that her wishes did not include aggressive and futile life support.  (Although a transfer to a medical bed or hospice care was ordered, none were available for her placement prior to her death.)

One of my colleagues who was serving as the designated Trauma response nurse was suddenly paged to the Emergency room.  A young man had been stabbed in the neck and was bleeding profusely. Major blood vessels were severed and the vascular team began preparing for immediate transport to the OR. The trauma room doc tried to control the bleeding by placing some temporary sutures and packing in the wound, when the young man began shouting that he didn't have insurance and that he couldn't afford to pay for any surgery. He said, "I don't want an operation, just let me go home."

Yes, he'd had a bit too much to drink, and was a danger to himself and not competent to make the decision to refuse.  The ER doc calmly explained to his young patient that he would die without the surgery.  Phone consent for treatment was obtained from his family. Two large IV's were started, and a bit of sedation was administered and emergency blood transfusions were initiated before the mad dash to the operating room got underway.  He would soon need that bed in the ICU.

And, on Meet the Press, David Gregory continued his interview of Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. Blah, blah, blah, Blagojevich, (the dish water is running), the war in Iraq...General Petraeus...the surge...and then, I heard Senator Reid express his opinion that George Bush is 'our worst president, ever.'

O.K. I thought, we all know how awful it's been. So, what then must we do?  I turned off the faucet; I was curious and began wondering, how's he going to justify his assertion?  What criteria, what example would have led him to that conclusion?  As the show was wrapping up, David Gregory fed Senator Reid a lead-in line, and it gave Reid the requisite opportunity to mention his recent book, The Good Fight.

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON, DC –  Just yesterday, the new First Family measured the drapes in the White House just blocks from where I write this piece.  It has been but a week since we saw history as my U.S. Senator Barack Obama was elected to be our next President.  But for some of us, the joy is tempered by a reality that just won’t abate.

If I heard the candidates refer to the pain on “Main Street” one more time, I thought I might explode.  While I think most Democrats come closer to “getting it” on issues of economic disparity than most right-wing Republicans, I don’t really believe anyone yet is capable of embracing people who have been damaged and bruised as a part of the “change” we need in Washington. It may come, but we’re not there yet or they’d be acting with appropriate haste.

It is now widely recognized that we are in a global recession of historic proportions, raising comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s. The failures of deregulated markets, whether in housing, banking or other industries, has become obvious to all. So far the private health insurance industry has not been called to account, but its day is coming soon.

Join the National Call in Day! Call your Congressional representative! Have your friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors call too! Call toll free: 1-866-338-1015. Find out if your representative is a cosponsor of HR 676 here. If so, thank them! If not, then follow this sample script: "Medicare has worked successfully for 43 years in providing quality health care to residents 65 years and older, while keeping administrative costs down. A single payer, guaranteed healthcare approach to reform is the only answer to the healthcare crisis in this country. Please sign on to HR 676 today!"

Don't be shy or embarrassed -- if you don't know who your representative is, just click here and find out: http://www.votesmart.org/

Join the effort to change America's broken healthcare system.

So you're uninsured.

But like so many, you're hanging in because, in a few years, you'll be eligible for Medicare.

Help has arrived. Finally, as a citizen of the richest country on the planet, you'll be able to access healthcare.

You'll be enrolled in Medicare, one of our most cherished social programs, a program designed to protect the most vulnerable among us, America's senior citizens.

 Not so fast, I'm sad beyond words to report.

You've watched to video at the beginning of this diary.  Now watch another video, heed the bleak words of the new president of the AMA, Dr. Nancy Neilsen.

Dr. Nielsen is ringing the alarm that the country is ''at the brink of a Medicare meltdown.'' To her huge credit, she's also naming names, and fingering those responsible for this latest healthcare atrocity.

The usual criminals as you might suspect. At the top of the list, the for-profit insurance industry (AHIP), and their political lapdogs. They are directing the money toward the private Medicare Advantage schemes, and sapping the lifeblood from traditional Medicare.

Ask Your Senators to Co-Sponsor S. 2785, the “Save Medicare Act of 2008” — 10.6% Medicare Physician Payment Cut to Go Into Effect July 1, 2008!