Donna Smith is best known as one of the documentary subjects of Michael Moore’s 2007 movie, "SiCKO." Her journalism career includes 15 regional awards from the AP Managing Editors. Donna now works as executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation, and co-chairs the Progressive Democrats of America’s national "Healthcare Not Warfare" campaign.
No Need for Cliff Dive: Support Prosperity not Austerity
It seems like only moments ago when we were still hearing the polling about how close the Presidential contest was and our phones were ring incessantly with robo calls courting our votes. Then with lightning speed following the elections, the horrors of falling off the impending fiscal cliff were all ...
Dead Woman Working: Fear in Every Storm
Working people in America have so much more to fear than brutal weather conditions when horrible storms like Hurricane Sandy (aka, tropical cyclone Sandy or super storm Sandy) come into our lives. Of course we fear the physical threats that the news and weather stations forecast. But we also fear ...
Dead Woman Working: Who is the Best Looking Candidate?
Several years ago, it made me angry when I heard a family member remark that she was voting for the candidate who she felt was the best looking. How superficial, I thought. Certainly, we ought to be voting more for a person's policies and leadership qualities rather than having a ...
Dead Woman Working: Why Won’t Someone Make Social Security Stronger?
Gutting Medicare and Social Security would make looking forward to retirement much more frightening for millions of working class Americans. That seems a simple statement that anyone could understand. Yet, I don't hear or see a public outcry against the sorts of changes that everyone with any power in American ...
Debate This: I’m 57 and I’ll Care Until I Die
The most troubling thing I heard last evening during the debate was that I could stop listening about the proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare if I was at or near retirement age. I’m not that selfish. I care that my children and grandchildren have those programs. I care ...
Dead Woman Working: So Much Fear, So Little Time
For many Americans, perhaps millions, the daily struggle to survive involves a significant amount of disconnection from our own realities. Worry and fear about staying afloat financially can and do cloud lives all around us – we mark our next steps by what we can afford not by what we ...
Dead Woman Working: Cancer and Multi-tasking for Care
It’s 2012, and being a cancer patient means being prepared to multi-task. From the first inklings that cancer might be one of the possible outcomes of a diagnostic journey, to notifying family and friends of test results, to studying up on treatments and drugs, to staying current with work and ...
Each year on September 11th, I feel a deep sense of love and peace. In fact, it is one of the few days of the year that remains so for me. I understand that for those who lost loved ones and friends in the September 11th attacks of 2001 in ...
Dead Woman Working: I’m No Robin Roberts
If you follow morning television at all or have it droning in the background as I often do while getting ready for my day, then you may have followed the cancer story of ABC’s “Good Morning America” co-host Robin Roberts. Her struggle has been an awful one, as is often ...
Aetna Builds Empire: One Denial at A Time
It’s a business. It’s big business, and it’s all about the money. When plans for Aetna to purchase Coventry Health for $5.7 billion surfaced this week, all I could think about is where people like me – Aetna’s insured – figure in the business models. I’m not a patient in ...
Dead Woman Working: American Dream Died Long Ago
It was a slow and torturous death, my American dream. And for millions of others, I am guessing it is the same. Nothing this current round of politicos is planning to do can restore it. Just like there is nothing to being a little bit pregnant, there is nothing anyone ...
Profits or Patients? Aetna and HCA Answer Without Hesitation
My tweet yesterday said I’d write about the three pieces of mail I received from my insurance company, Aetna, this week. All three confirmed it. In their eyes and in every manner of decision they make, I am either a medical loss if a claim must be paid or I ...
The High Cost of U.S. Health System Dysfunction
While the human costs of our dysfunctional health system are staggering in terms of death, suffering, and financial trauma for patients and families, we pay a steep economic price over the long haul when we follow patients and discover the ongoing costs and the collateral damage to our economy. A ...
Insurance Companies Gaming the System – Don’t Be Fooled
Has your insurance company called you recently to ask you to sign up for a wellness or disease management program? Has that same company told you it’s a free service to policyholders and promised you that they do not share the information with the departments and people who administer your ...
Healthcare, Migratory Waterfowl, Sparrows, Guns and Our Children
Most often, I am writing about healthcare reform and making our way to one single standard of high quality care for all under an improved and expanded Medicare for all for life system. And certainly as I write this, I think every person facing physical or emotional injuries from the ...
Justice Unresolved and How We Forget Survivors
Horror. Horrific. Unthinkable violence. Death around us. Resolve to recover and to remember those killed and injured. Media frenzy to show the trauma. The pattern of how we deal with mass murders in America is now becoming standard operating procedure for the media and also, unfortunately, for many communities. And ...
Today in Aurora, 19 Years Washed Away
Nineteen years ago, on a chilly evening just before Christmas 1993, Ben, Sylvia, Coleen and Marge died and Bobby was shot at the hands of a lone gunman at the Aurora, CO, Chuck E Cheese pizza parlor where my son Russ was working. Russ had arrived home early from his ...
Medicare for all CA Bus tour: In West Covina Tonight SiCKO ‘Sisters’ Reunite
What: SiCKO Reunion on final summer 2012 Medicare for all bus tour stop in California When: Thursday, July 12 – health screenings 3:00-6:00 pm, and town hall at 6:30 pm Where: West Covina City Hall, 1444 W Garvey Ave Today in West Covina, the California Nurses Association summer 2012 Medicare ...
Why Not Healthcare for the World? Get On the Bus
After spending the past month on the California Nurses Association Medicare for all bus tour in California, I am more confident than ever about the prospects of winning guaranteed healthcare for all under an improved Medicare model. Cradle to grave. For life. In California. Everywhere. Our wonderful videographer, Erin Fitzgerald, ...
For Our Health or Your Wealth, That is the Question
Patients find it very difficult to tell in our dysfunctional healthcare system in the U.S. whether we are being cared for as people or being worked over for profit potential. It’s frustrating and painful to hear ourselves referred to as consumers or customers rather than patients. Rest assured that when ...
What You Did for the Least of These, California, You Do for Us All
Notes from the road in California: I’ve been on the National Nurses United Medicare for All for life bus tour since mid-June, with one break to travel to Philadelphia for the SiCKO 5th reunion. So first let me admit I have a bit of “bus brain” going on. It’s a ...
For Tracy, Jr., and for Mychelle: Our SiCKO Struggle Continues
SiCKO turned five this week. The Michael Moore film that exposed the brutalities of the U.S. healthcare system and what that system has done to injure real, insured Americans turned five. And along with that anniversary came both sober realities and the healing support that only one SiCKO can give ...
Pallor or Power, Patients or Consumers: Which Model Do We Want?
It’s a big day. And the corporate model for healthcare in America just triumphed over our humanity. The corporate Supreme Court honored all of its masters mightily in upholding the position that patients are consumers, taxes are bad, and full steam ahead on a healthcare system that includes a bailed-out ...
No Matter What, You Cannot Unfeel the Healthcare Pain in California
It hurts. The stories hurt. The aching, pounding, insistent sounds of Californians telling the nurses where it hurts. This is what the Medicare for all for life bus tour is all about in California. And just as you cannot unring a bell, there is no way you can unfeel the ...
On the Road Again, Cancer Does Not Wait for Nine Robed Judges
My cancer won’t wait and doesn’t care about what nine robed judges in Washington, DC, say about healthcare. Cancer doesn’t care. Obamacare. Romneycare. No matter. Cancer doesn’t care. But the nurses do.Unrelenting and not fearful of any CEO’s rage or the loss of a political contribution, cancer, illness and injury ...
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June 6th, 2013
How Many Precious Gifts, Like Andrea Bocelli's, Murdered for Health Care Profits in America?
Last evening, I was lucky enough to attend the best concert I have ever seen or heard. Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli was in Denver for ...
June 2nd, 2013
Colorado Launches Quest to End Health Care Carnage and Suffering
As May closed its grip -- finally -- on the health care dead and broke and June began to log its own death and bankruptcy ...
May 24th, 2013
How Many U.S. Dead for Health Care Profits Does It Take to Cause Alarm?
We keep winning the race to see who can charge the most for health care services around the world. We also keep winning the race ...
May 22nd, 2013
Aetna Needs Their Money, I Just Need Health Care
I lost my health coverage because I could not afford to keep paying the COBRA premiums. As soon as I lost my coverage, Aetna set ...
May 19th, 2013
Saturday Night Dead ---- Courtesy of the U.S. Health Care System
There are 123 fewer Americans watching and laughing at the 2013 season ender for Saturday Night Live tonight because they were killed by the U.S. health care ...
May 16th, 2013
Tornadoes, Suicide Bombs, and the U.S. Health Care Dead and Broke
The news today is grim, to be sure. Tornadoes in Texas with the dead and the missing, Roadside, suicide bombs in Afghanistan with U.S. casualties. ...
May 15th, 2013
Protecting Angelina's Honor as U.S. Health Care System Kills 123 People Daily
Yesterday I wrote about the recent revelations from Angelina Jolie about her double mastectomy. I said nothing ill-willed about the mega-star nor did I imply ...
December 24th, 2009
A Patient’s View of the Senate Christmas Healthcare Gift
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 ...
July 15th, 2011
‘Let ‘Em Eat Peas’ Can Be the Modern Age Elitist Mantra
It has been a challenging week for many people. While our elected officials have been broadly reported to be at odds about exactly how to ...
August 15th, 2012
Dead Woman Working: American Dream Died Long Ago
It was a slow and torturous death, my American dream. And for millions of others, I am guessing it is the same. Nothing this current ...
October 21st, 2012
Dead Woman Working: Who is the Best Looking Candidate?
Several years ago, it made me angry when I heard a family member remark that she was voting for the candidate who she felt was ...
September 5th, 2011
Worker’s Ode to Labor Day 2011
Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.Work. Be grateful to be working. Work harder. Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get ...
January 11th, 2010
White House Believes “Liberal Angst” Over Healthcare Will Go Away
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide ...
May 14th, 2013
My Breasts and My Life Not as Valuable as Angelina's
While women and men around the world applaud Angelina Jolie for her bravery in writing such a public opinion piece in the New York Times today about her ...
'The East'
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
Michael Moore on MSNBC with Michael Eric Dyson, 3/22/13
Michael Moore on Democracy Now!, 6/28/12
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 5/11/12
Michael Moore on MSNBC, Super Tuesday, 3/6/12
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
