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.
NHCHC: A Conference That Love Built
SAN FRANCISCO – Once every year, the amazing people who work to provide healthcare services to the homeless people of America gather to learn, to share and to re-energize. This week the National Health Care for the Homeless Council has been convening its national conference on the West Coast, in ...
It’s a bit silly to look back on a simpler – or at least less cluttered – time and long to recreate those moments. But as the days grow longer and warmer perhaps longings such as these are to be expected. The neighborhood picnic, the block party, the community parade, ...
Pallor and Pain; Sorrow and Stain
Over this past weekend, I watched more coverage on the BP Gulf oil spill and felt this growing sense of deep sadness and rage. The spill threatens so much more than we can yet fathom as we see this most recent fouling of our planet unfolding slowly, steadily and insistently ...
More for TV than for Healthcare in America’s Hospitals
Many American patients pay more for television access in their hospital rooms than foreign patients pay for the care they receive. It’s yet another hard reality of our system. We know what we value in our nation’s healthcare empire, and what we value is profit. And while it might be ...
Nurses Scrub the Place Down in DC
Sometimes, Washington, DC, can be a pretty stuffy place. It’s not just all the business suits and the clickety-clack of high-heels down the marble hallways as staffers rush to and fro doing the bidding of their Congressional members. It’s not just the daily drone of anemic cries for civility from ...
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 ...
I really love the Greek general strike. I love our stock market falling in response, I must admit. I suspect lots of other broke people like me do too. We have nothing left to lose and certainly no stock to lose value. Our pride went long ago. Our house went. ...
April 23, 2010 – Happy 56th Birthday Michael Moore
Happy 56, Michael. Thank you for doing all the courageous things and the fun things you have done in your 56 years. Our nation would be far less just than it is right now without your films, your humor, your courage, your talent and your unwillingness to just throw in ...
Everybody In, Nobody Out: At Temple and Beyond an Injury to One is an Injury to All
When you see the faces of the members of PASNAP (Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals) on strike at Temple University Hospital and perhaps most especially when you see the faces of their children walking on the picket line with them, you embrace the reality of why these ...
Is the Shaw’s and Star Market’s Mission in Massachusetts to Harm Expectant Mothers?
BOSTON – With cut-out smiling figures of Barack and Michelle Obama in the background, two striking warehouse workers told a crowd gathered in Boston on Saturday the horrifying reality they face at the hands of Shaw’s Supermarket management. One young man’s wife is six months pregnant and on April 1, ...
24 Hours in a U.S. Patient’s Life with No Hope for Change
It’s 10:45 p.m. when the patient’s legs begin to shake. First like a chill setting in and then more like a tremor. The only thing that helps is standing. As the shaking continues, the patient breaks out in a cold sweat and has a mild chest discomfort, something he has ...
Temple Students ‘Die-In’ To Oppose Exploitation of Workers
PHILADELPHIA – “Should I care if someone else is being exploited?” asked Kate Harkins, 21, of Schuylkill County, PA, who is a junior majoring in American Studies at Temple. “If we don’t stand up for those workers now, then down the road when we are workers, conditions will not be ...
Has a Nurse Ever Helped You? Time to Step Up
PHILADELPHIA – Nurses at Temple University Hospital are on strike. They have been on strike since March 31, when after months of working without a contract, they had finally had enough. More than 1,500 members of the Pennsylvania Staff Nurses and Allied Health Professionals (PASNAP) who work at the busy ...
Temple Strike Day Four: In Your Easter Bonnet
PHILADELPHIA -- Well, it wasn’t an Easter parade coming through Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, but it was a march by striking registered nurses and other Temple University Hospital health professionals that included lots of kids and family members deferring the activities that usually mark the spring holiday weekend. On the ...
RNs on Strike at Temple: Snapshots from Day Three on the Line
A transplant doctor steps into the crowd of picketing nurses and other health professionals at Temple and says how much he hopes this is all over soon. “I just cannot transplant anyone this way,” he shares. No one takes any pleasure in his statement, but another RN asks him about ...
Undaunted: Movement for Improved Medicare for All Grows in Illinois and Across the Nation
Just blocks from President Obama's Hyde Park home south of the Loop in Chicago, more than 70 activists gathered on Saturday, March 27, 2010, to plan strategy for advancing an improved and expanded Medicare for all system as the law of the land. Activists across the nation are undaunted by the ...
Entitlement Reform: The Real Language of Hatred
While we might want to get angry about language and ugliness surfacing during the national discussion of the health insurance reform bill just signed into law, the real nasty language dripping with contempt and loathing for the unwashed masses of America is the language of “entitlement reform.” Just as supposedly ...
SiCKOs Lament: Health Bill Passage
So, it’s a new day in America, the Dem’s leadership proclaims-- I’m to believe that just like the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, this healthcare bill will bring long-term and profound changes to the broken healthcare system in ways that will make me more able ...
‘Healthcare Not Warfare’ Brown Bag Vigils Spread to 89 Congressional Districts
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 ...
It’s Really Quite Simple: Do We Value Each Life in America?
The question is straightforward and simple. Do we value each life? Yes or no. No matter what Congress passes or doesn’t pass, no matter what the President signs, no matter who buys insurance or has a subsidy to buy it, no matter which person is on Medicaid or Medicare or ...
When Patients Own the System: A Progressively Financed, Single Standard of Care for All
The national legislative healthcare fix that may be passed by the 111th Congress and then signed by President Obama will do little to relieve the stresses felt by most patients in this country. The steady decline most of us have seen in the kind of quality medical services we need ...
Musicians Add to Call for Medicare for All
This man – struggling with his own healthcare mess – is using his talents in music and composition to reach out for meaningful change in this healthcare mess. Bob Wickline of Fox Island, WA, hopes that his music will join that of other artists all over the nation in calling ...
What Patients Deserve to Know: Even Vegas has to Publish Its Odds
Since millions of American patients face medical debt they didn’t know they’d have – and many if not most of them purchased insurance to protect against that debt – it seems logical to me that patients should be fully informed up front of the financial risks they are taking on ...
When the Health Reform Truth Oozes Out: And It Isn’t Just
Even the staging of the hand-picked doctors in starched white coats could not keep the truth of the healthcare reform process from oozing out of President Obama during Wednesday’s press event. Not just… “Everything there is to say about healthcare has been said and just about everyone has said it,” ...
A Mother’s Personal Mission: Healthcare Not Warfare
This week, the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign I help co-chair for Progressive Democrats of America becomes even more deeply personal for me. My son leaves for his volunteer tour of duty in Afghanistan. And I won’t be there to say goodbye. Because I advocate a position of peace, my son ...
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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 ...
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 ...
May 11th, 2013
Thousands Dead in 2013 U.S. Health System Failure
Beginning tonight, I want to create the U.S. health care death toll count for all to see and read. These are the dead due to ...
May 10th, 2013
Selling Pain and Suffering to the Masses
From this point forward, as state health insurance exchanges begin to roll out their advertising and health insurance companies turn up the volume to advertise ...
May 3rd, 2013
Health Care Mayday! In Colorado – Leading Health Advocacy Group Calls for Action
It’s May. It’s American Bike Month, Asparagus Month, Asthma & Allergy Awareness Month, Better Hearing & Speech Month, Flower Month, National Bar-B-Que Month, National Egg ...
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 ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
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
