Guaranteed Healthcare

Politicians and pundits forget that we still have a public health infrastructure that still fights to prevent preventable diseases like polio, measles, tuberculosis, HIV, std's and would be called upon in a city-wide disaster to provide care and comfort to traumatized citizens left high and dry by natural events.

We are still the safety net for now 48 million Americans without health insurance and even those with insurance  who cannot afford to pay the rising costs of their own care. We are the "white line" against disaster, communicable diseases and those with no real access to care.  But, because of cuts, especially here in California by Arnold Schwarzenegger, medicare and other state programs which for the Govenator has become the only way to ease our budget woes , this thin white line in the sand,  faces more strains than ever before.  We need to get serious about single-payer sooner rather than later.  The public's health is at risk without it.

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

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, Communications Specialist, CNA/NNOC

CHICAGO -- If we had a healthcare lifeboat within our sinking system, Patrick Murfin of Crystal Lake, IL, is pretty sure there’s no room on board for him.  I recently attended a hearing in McHenry, IL, on the Illinois state single payer bill, and when I heard Patrick testify, I felt sad and angry for him.

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.

I am adding my voice to the thousands who are joining the protest today against the immoral and profit driven insurance companies who are making obscene amounts of money substituting "health coverage" for health care. We all have friends, neighbors and even family members who have horror stories to tell about being denied the help they thought they were paying for. You can read many of these stories on these pages.

Conyers demands Congress to discuss HR 676 TUESDAY, June 10.  The session will be covered on C-SPAN,  beginning at approximately 9:00 p.m. eastern standard time
(EST).

I'm just back from vacation - a bike tour in France - where I happened to learn about one more of the ways a single payer system works better.

I cannot help but feel hopeful as we now have a presidential candidate who promises to bring real change to America and give the American people what they want and deserve. A priority for me, and as the polls show and the statistics confirm, for the majority of Americans, is to have a real healthcare system in this country. Healthcare for everyone (universal coverage) that puts medical decisions back into the hands of the caregivers and takes the profit out of adminstrating a needed service (single payer system) and one that is humane and compassionate, emphasising wellness, prevention and equality of care across the spectrum of birth to death. Healthcare that is inclusive of dental, vision, hearing and mental health, recognizing that the body is a whole and that society is a whole and that sickness that affects a part jeopardizes the wellness and viabiliity of the whole.

The juxaposition takes your breath away.

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Barack Obama, an African-American, becomes the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party and will likely be the next President of the United States.

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More grim information about the tragic realities of our broken healthcare system. In a new study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation we learn:

Race and place of residence can have a staggering impact on the course and quality of the medical treatment a patient receives, according to new research showing that blacks with diabetes or vascular disease are nearly five times more likely than whites to have a leg amputated and that women in Mississippi are far less likely to have mammograms than those in Maine.

You don't have to be an RN or an MD to understand the fact that as human beings age, we may be predisposed to acquiring one or more chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, emphysema, and heart disease, to name but a few.  We are also more accident prone due to poor eyesight, hearing loss, delayed reflexes, and impaired mobility. It's been said that old age isn't for sissies and clearly, longevity is not without risks. However, most of us prefer it to the alternative.

The headline in the Sacramento Bee (5/30) reads, "CONSUMER REPORTS rates hospitals on aggressive or conservative late-life care".  Forgive my cynicism, after nearly 34 years as a critical care nurse, but I'm here to tell you that the patients who arrive in the hospital these days have run out of choices, and have nearly lost their lives because they couldn't afford primary care, or they've had the misfortune of being the victim of violence, or involved in an accident. And, they don't have the time or the money to go shopping for care, nor the education and expertise to determine which treatments will be therapeutic, safe, and effective at restoring them to their optimal level of functioning. For that, they depend on their doctors and nurses.