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.
Reframe the Debate: Make Congressional Members Claim Their Dead
Ah, the politics of it all. Healthcare reform may or may not pass through the 111th Congress. President Obama may or may not be successful in crafting further concessions to a Senate or House version of health reform that he dubbed “health insurance reform” in order to step away from ...
If Terror is the Measure, It’s Healthcare War
Since I was a little child huddled in the elementary school hallway for the bomb drills to the present day when I listen to the reasons my nation must spend more on foreign military actions, the means of securing public support for war in this nation seems to have centered ...
The State of My Union Isn't So Great
While the media wonks and policy geeks banter about what President Obama will or won’t say in his first State of the Union address, I’d like to offer my own view of the unfolding U.S. health system crisis. I’m a patient in this system, and I am a wife and ...
Sometimes Disaster Breathes Healthcare Words of Truth
Everybody in, nobody out. It’s the battle cry of millions of people throughout the United States who believe healthcare is a basic human right and who advocate for Medicare for All system as an achievable and just answer to that cry. Everybody in, nobody out. It’s the way we are ...
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 the spoil with the proud. – Proverbs 16: 18-19, the Bible My Grandma Delphia used to quote that Bible verse. I wonder if other folks ...
Promises, Promises: Should This Congress and This President Learn from a Little Lip Reading?
Should Democratic members of the House vote “no” on any reform legislation that includes an excise tax on health benefits? Even if it’s now the President’s preferred funding method for the healthcare insurance company bail-out bill (or health insurance reform bill, as it’s known in the proper political framing terminology)? ...
It’s Our Lives, It’s Our Money: Do Health Reform In the Sunshine
If there is nothing to protect that relates to national security, every bit of the health reform legislation debate and negotiation should be done in public. Period. We read today that C-SPAN is arguing that the negotiations between the House and the Senate on their healthcare bills need to be ...
Blood Money 2010: Healthcare in America
Ask patients who need lab work done how that all works out today in America, and then imagine where this trend is going in the future. It’s blood money paid up front and in full or patients must take their chances. Getting laboratory tests or other medical testing done has ...
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 insurance – forever, amen. The defective product that has left me wanting for real healthcare for all of my adult life is now a step ...
Senate, White House Health Reform Tucks in Gun Rights
Could we make this stuff up? We cannot get healthcare as a basic human right for one another. But we sure can make sure gun ownership protections are tucked into the Senate health reform bill that is so celebrated as historic by the White House.It gives a whole new meaning ...
Healthcare Crisis Tears at Fabric of Holiday Traditions
Our elected officials in Washington, DC, are rushing to finish their work and get home for the holidays. Many of the people who elected them aren’t so richly blessed. Millions and millions of Americans do not get the Norman Rockwell holiday scene played out in their lives because millions and ...
Sanders Says Single-Payer Day Will Come as He Withdraws Amendment
Sickening. Saddening. Maddening. And the stuff of future determination in the political struggle for healthcare for all in the United States. On the floor of the U.S. Senate today, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont rose to offer his single-payer, Medicare for All amendment No. 2837 and to begin debate. Then, ...
Sanders Single-Payer Healthcare Amendment to be Considered in Senate
This is it, Medicare for All, single-payer advocates. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Announced tonight that tomorrow the Senate will hear several more amendments to the health reform bill – and one of those amendments is Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer amendment No. 2837. The amendment also has two other original ...
Senate Tweaks Away Your Healthcare
As my grandmother used to say, “I was born on a weekend but not last weekend.” The latest insult to Americans hungry for a bit of healthcare justice for all comes from the news that the Senate health bill now allows insurance companies to place annual limits on payments for ...
Health Reform Advances 2,300 Miles Away from DC
While the healthcare reform legislative debate lumbers on in the Senate, the biggest advance for U.S. patients came early this week in Phoenix. Nurses joined three separate nurses’ unions into an RN “super union” with the goals of improving the professional lives of clinical RNs and building a healthcare system ...
History in a Number: Senate Amendment 2837
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 ...
Before You Carve that Turkey: All In for Bernie Sanders
Those millions of us who support a Medicare for All, single-payer, reform for the healthcare crisis in this nation have some work to do over the next few days. Senators are on their way to their home states for the one-week Thanksgiving recess – and they need a little up ...
Dickens Revisited, Circa 2009, Healthcare USA
Some Americans will schlep into a local theater to check out Disney’s latest 3-D version of “A Christmas Carol.” They’ll gather up the kids and worry about whether or not it’s appropriate viewing or a little too scary for the wee ones. Other Americans are planning holiday travel and bemoaning ...
I'll Bet the 10.2 Percent Can’t Keep What They’ve Got
Hey There, Congress and Mr. President. It’s your citizens. Lots of us are losing jobs and benefits. We cannot keep the benefits we’ve got when we lose our jobs. In fact it’s really hard to keep paying all the bills without a job and an income. The new jobless numbers ...
Nataline Keeps Bending the Arc of Healthcare Justice
"Someday, my story will be your story," Gregor Sarkisyan, father of the late Nataline Sarkisyan, 17, who died December 20, 2007, as CIGNA denied her care. She could be your child, she could be my child, she was his child. Watch Gregor’s still grief-stricken face as he tries again to ...
Single Payer State Option Threatened in House
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the healthcare bill she plans to bring to the floor Thursday, will it still have the amendment that allows individual states the option of bypassing legal barriers to pass state single payer bills? Apparently not, in the latest concession to the insurance industry, Blue ...
TARP-Loving Joe Loves Bailing Out Banks but Not Providing Healthcare
Are we to believe Senator Joe Lieberman objects to a public health insurance plan because he's a raging believer in the free market or in protecting taxpayers funds? That's just not true Joe. You're a TARP-lover, aren't you? Come on, tell the truth.Joe loved voting for the Troubled Asset Relief ...
Why Isn't 122 Dead Americans Every Day a National Health Emergency?
Why does H1N1 call for a Presidential designation as a national emergency while the preventable deaths of 45,000 Americans every year (122 every day) is not? Swine flu leads the news. You can die from swine flu, or should we say H1N1, even if you have no underlying health conditions. ...
Weiner’s Amendment Breathes 45,000 Lives into H.R. 3200
Wow. Things are getting pretty tense out in the trenches where we’ve all seen Wall Street bailouts and bulging unemployment while Congress inches forward on the healthcare reform debate. Millions of us have lost jobs, homes, retirement savings and access to healthcare benefits. And if many in the for-profit health ...
Greed Claims Another American Mother and Child. Had Enough?
Jenny Fritts was 24 years old. Jenny lived with her husband Sean for the past five years, and together they had a little girl named Kylee, 2. Jenny was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child - a beautiful, baby girl. Jenny is dead. Jenny's unborn baby is dead. They ...
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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
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
