Thursday, May 1, 2008 5:16 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKO and communications specialist for CNA/NNOCWashington, D.C., Minneapolis and Boston -- The movement to reform healthcare in this nation is growing, and it is edging its way out of the quiet, borrowed conference rooms of social justice organizing meetings and into national labor headquarters, community centers, state houses and the streets. This week alone, I saw Americans from 9 to 90 in three states and six separate venues stand up and even jump in the air calling for true reform.
In Washington, D.C., a noontime showing of Michael Moore’s ‘SiCKO’ at the national AFL-CIO building as part of the 2008 Labor Film Fest and within several hundred yards of the White House drew a great crowd. Rep. John Conyers, chair of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, addressed the crowd and continued to push for his bill, HR676, The National Health Insurance Act, which now has 90 Congressional co-sponsors and which would create a national, single-payer healthcare plan. It was a significant step forward for a film about the travesty that is the current U.S. for-profit healthcare system to be shown in this location at this time.
If national labor organizations would take the endorsements of Conyers’ HR676 by more than 400 labor locals more seriously, the national labor movement might well revolutionize the future of healthcare for its members and the entire nation. Healthcare justice marched forward a bit on that screen at the AFL-CIO headquarters last week.
In Minneapolis, less than 24 hours later, Conyers told attendees of the “Healthcare is a Human Right” conference that we will win single-payer in the future, and we will win it with “love and with logic.” We are so lucky, Chairman Conyers said, to live in a nation where to disagree does not mean we must hate one another. As we go forward, he noted, we will continue showing that not only is HR676 the right and just way to reform healthcare but also the most logical and sensible and sound means as well.
The people attending the Minneapolis conference were largely poor people fighting for all manner of economic justice and good sense. Many shared stories of pain and suffering, and Conyers listened patiently and compassionately. Healthcare justice nudged forward on that cold and snowy April Saturday at a Minnesota community center where one of the nation’s most powerful lawmakers honored the struggle and uplifted the fight.
Then in Boston, fists were blasted into the air and voices raised to acknowledge Tom Morello’s 2008 Justice Tour stop supporting healthcare for all. Morello performs as The Nightwatchman but also played for ‘Rage Against the Machine’ and ‘Audioslave.’ Morello brought with him Gary Cherone of Extreme and rapper Boots Riley of the Coup – and even Wayne Kramer of MC5. The crowd was filled with every imaginable age group, and the concert fired people up and gave them voice and gave them dignity. And Morello donated all of concert proceeds to the movement.
After ‘SiCKO’ was shown in the same auditorium in the Boston state house where the healthcare is a human right amendment to the Massachusetts constitution was buried forever just months ago, Morello convened the Justice Tour performers again on the Boston Commons.
In spite of rain, driving wind and falling temperatures, Morello and his fellow tour members played on. He performed “Alone Without You,” which was written for ‘SiCKO’ as American SiCKOs Adrian Campbell of Detroit and I embraced each other and finally mourned for one another and for all who still suffer at the hands of the broken healthcare system.
As the show wrapped up on the wet and windy Commons and a child tossed a ball in the air as guitar strains wailed and drum throbs pounded, Morello and the other artists led the crowd in a defiant and proud rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” A park police officer sang next to a protestor and an 80-year-old jumped up and down on stage with Morello.
And last week the movement for healthcare justice marched forward with love and with logic and with a little rage all across this land.
Monday, April 21, 2008 3:32 PM
ST LOUIS – Citizens in the ‘Show Me’ state lived up to their billing when more than 150 people turned out on Saturday night at the St. Louis Ethical Society to watch ‘SiCKO’ and to hear more about healthcare from American SiCKOs Donna and Larry Smith. The event was a huge success with guests enjoying free popcorn and lemonade provided by volunteers and lingering for more than an hour for a lively question and answer session led by Donna.
Earlier in the day, Missourians for Single Payer (MoSP), led a rally and march in University City, MO, where nurses, patients, and healthcare activists joined together to carry signs and even a coffin to call attention to their work for healthcare reform.
On Sunday, the Ethical Society listened to an address by Donna Smith entitled, “Beyond SiCKO” that included a photo slide show presentation and more education on common sense healthcare reform. The crowd gave Donna a standing ovation following her address, and several audience members told her they now understand and fully support single payer reform as a result of her visit and all of the healthcare weekend activities in St. Louis.
Friday, March 7, 2008 9:06 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKOCHICAGO – Pressure and worry robbed me of my sleep for so long that when I slept through the night on Sunday, I thought it a fluke. Then I slept through the night on Monday and again on Tuesday. Though on a hide-a-bed folded out into an apartment living room still jammed with unpacked boxes, my soul and my body have begun to heal.
How many other Americans, I wonder, have spent years as I did struggling to rest with worries about health care and insurance and money and just staying afloat? For the past 20 years, my sleep patterns have drifted from bad to worse as our lives were upended by health concerns and made absolutely terrifying by the financial ruin that followed.
But now, just a year after I first met Michael Moore during the filming of “SiCKO,” I am in a new job with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee – and I have decent insurance benefits and an apartment that is warm and safe.
After the devastation of the past few years, as these blessings unfold for me, I can feel the rising urgency to see that every American family who labors and grieves for dreams crushed and life savings wiped out by the broken health care system find relief through the realization of national, single payer health care for all of us.
There is no way that the kind of mental, emotional and physical stress we have endured has not contributed to some of our health woes. And the stress is being felt and shared by millions of people in our society. Yet, I have not seen anyone truly talk about what that is doing to the burgeoning health costs in this nation or what it is doing to family dynamics or what it does to our communities. Angry, worried, frightened people may be easier to control, but they are costly to maintain in such a state.
Now, my life has not become an overnight utopia. My personal issues and stresses will always have some play on my time and energy. But the gift of sleep and the gift of even this additional measure of peace-of-mind is such a welcome and unexpected relief.
I was prepared to give everything I had and everything I am to the fight for real health care reform. I was giving so much that my body and soul were weary and yet unable to find rest or restoration. But now with greater strength and tenacity, and with the support of this marvelous organization for which I now work, I can truly give the best measure of myself. Talk about empowerment…
And isn’t that what we’d like to see for every American? The opportunity to live and work freely and without fear from for-profit, systemic health care disaster is a gift we can give one another. Single payer is not the evil enemy of the freedom. It is one of the best ways we can reinforce and strengthen personal freedom for every American.
Friday, February 8, 2008 12:32 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKODENVER, February 1, 2008 -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s health reform plan that included mandated health insurance purchases crashed and burned early this week on the West Coast legislative highway. But undaunted by that most recent defeat for mandates, Colorado's Blue Ribbon Health Reform panel -- the 208 Commission -- decided to recommend mandates to the Colorado General Assembly on Thursday afternoon even though achieving universal coverage through mandates is already a failed model for reform.
Colorado need not search too hard to see the failures of plans like that recommended by the 208 Commission for Coloradoans. In Massachusetts, a two-tiered system of health care is entrenching itself as the insurance mandates and connectors that were the brainchildren of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney take hold and price average, working-class citizens out of market for buying affordable, quality health coverage.
Meanwhile, the 208 Commission in Colorado patted itself on the back and soaked up the accolades of legislators as their report was offered up in a 12-page Colorful Colorado brochure. The recommendations read, in part: 'Require every legal resident of Colorado to have at least minimum health coverage(enforce through income tax penalties; provide affordability exemptions)' and 'Create a 'Connector' to assist individuals and small businesses and their employees in offering and enrolling in health coverage.'
Americans throughout the land -- and certainly in Colorado -- should now be feeling a distinct feeling of Deja vu. After months of work, millions of taxpayer dollars, the testimony of hundreds (if not thousands) of citizens and even the independent cost and savings assessments that show single-payer reform as much more cost-effective and efficient, state legislatures continue to ignore factual information and simplicity in favor of complexity and punishment. Citizens already punished by not being able to afford health coverage will then be slapped with penalties administered by new government personnel required to enforce the mandates and collect the fines for non-coverage. Those who raised the red flags about government involvement in the delivery of health care don't seem to have any problem creating new bureaucracy to protect insurance company profits.
As reported in the Boston Globe, 'The (Massachusetts) Connector system is encouraging insurance companies to include only a limited network of cheaper physicians and facilities in some plans to hold down premiums. Patients who wish to see more expensive providers will have to dig into their own pockets. Dr. Steffie Wollhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, worries that the Connector will revive Gov. Romney's original idea of enrolling poor people in plans that only offer access to neighborhood health centers ill-equipped to treat anything beyond routine ailments. Forcing people to buy substandard care they cannot afford is not universal care, she says. 'It is a hoax.' And so Massachusetts is marching toward a system of two-tiered medicine -- the alleged market inequity that universal care is supposed to cure.'
Back in Colorado and with disregard for what other states are already experiencing, the 208 Commission did not march boldly forward with health care reform the would truly provide access and affordability for Colorado's residents but rather chose to dabble in the disappointing -- a retread of the plan least likely to offend the powerful insurance industry lobbyists who lingered gleefully just outside the Old Supreme Court Chambers and greeted legislators as they went in to listen.
The take home lesson: America’s health insurance industry is the problem. Any reform based on a prominent role for the industry precludes success, because the private health insurance industry is simply too bureaucratic and expensive. The administrative overhead in the current private system approaches 30%. The 208 Commission did recommended work on administrative costs and a restructuring and combining of Medicaid and SCHIP offerings, which the state legislature now says may be the only reform it will move forward this session. To do otherwise is simply too costly, said State Sen. Bob Hagedorn, D-Aurora, in Friday morning's Rocky Mountain News.
He's probably right about the cost issue -- at least if he really read the Lewin Group's assessment of the only reform plan that would save Colorado any money at all -- the Colorado Health Services Program, the single payer option supported at public hearings but considered politically controversial. Mandates do cost a lot, as is evidenced in Massachusetts in dollars spent and in difficulties created for working class citizens.
The failure of the mandate model in the six states that have tried it (and as is unfolding currently in Massachusetts) can be directly attributed to the private insurance industry. Each of these state reform efforts promised cost savings, but none included real cost controls. As the cost of health care soared, legislators backed off from enforcing the mandates or from financing new coverage for the poor. Just last month, Massachusetts projected that its costs for subsidized coverage may run $147 million over budget.
The “mandate model” for reform rests on political surrender: avoid challenging insurance firms’ stranglehold on health care while coercing the uninsured to purchase costly insufficient insurance policies. But it is economic nonsense. The reliance on private insurers makes universal coverage unaffordable.
It is ironic that what started out as a “politically feasible” alternative to the California single payer bill turned out to have little political support when it came under scrutiny in the California Senate. California mandates failed the “politically feasible” test because supporters surrendered to the insurance industry in advance on cost control and then gave them a blank check in the form of millions of new customers.
Far better for Colorado to learn from the damage done in other states and follow California's lead in rejecting mandates. It's no better in the Rocky Mountain West than on the East or West coasts. Mandates never have and never will take the place of true health care reform. And citizens are waiting for leaders who are bold enough to stop paying tax dollars for the rewrites of broken plans.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:18 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKODENVER -- The pillars did not crumble and the crosses did not quake as Michael Moore's documentary 'SiCKO' played on the screen in the sanctuary of the First Universalist Church of Denver. More than 100 people attended the forum hosted by the churches Social Justice Committee, and the group lingered for more than an hour after the film to talk with two of the film's subjects, Larry and Donna Smith, of Aurora, Colorado.
The First Universalist's Social Justice Committee has already endorsed single-payer (publicly funded, privately delivered), universal health care, and the forum was one in a series held to give the community an opportunity to explore the issues. Dave Bean, webmaster for Health Care for All Colorado, was also invited to speak about state efforts to pass a single-payer plan.
The Smiths expressed their gratitude in being able to speak within the Denver faith community where the discussion of universal health care is sometimes not so welcome as the ill-informed or ill-intentioned equate single-payer coverage with socialism or even communism. Some more conservative churches never discuss the subject -- nor would they dare show 'SiCKO' -- lest the right-wing elements go on the attack. But Donna Smith thanked the Universalists for being part of the larger faith community which must speak up on behalf of those who are suffering at the hands of the current health system.
Dave Bean spoke about Colorado's effort at health reform, including the upcoming January 31 report of the blue ribbon commission on health reform to the Colorado state legislature. Though a huge number of Coloradoans attended the commission's public hearings in support of single-payer reform, the commission is poised to recommend mandated insurance coverage as part of their own solution while the state's governor, Bill Ritter, takes care to make only incremental, politically cautious plans for change.
Smith reminded the crowd that there already is national legislation for single-payer reform. HR676, the National Health Insurance Act, already has 87 co-sponsors, though no one from Colorado's delegation, sadly. Smith said those who wonder why their Congressional member does not sign on to HR676 need look no further than their campaign contributors for the reasons. 'Democrat or Republican, some of our leaders are plain bought and paid for,' Smith said. In particular, the group asked about Rep. Diana DeGette, D-CO, and Smith urged the group to look at
opensecrets.org to find all of the more than 400,000 reasons why the popular Colorado Democrat has not co-sponsored HR676 as yet.
Since it was January 13, the Smiths also asked the audience to say a prayer in remembrance of Tracy Pierce, who 'went to sleep' for the last time on January 13, 2006, and then died five days later after having been denied numerous treatments for the kidney cancer that claimed his life. January 13 is also Julie Pierce's (Tracy's widow) birthday. The group spent a few moments in silence. The Pierce's story is also a part of 'SiCKO,' and the Smiths have become dear friends to Julie and Tracy, Jr.
The church will continue its efforts in support of single-payer health care reform in the months to come.
Labels: Bill Ritter, Colorado, Diana DeGette, Donna Smith, HR676, Larry Smith, SiCKO, Tracy Pierce
Sunday, January 6, 2008 7:46 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKODENVER -- I am the one. 47,000,000 and one. As 2008 dawned, I joined the ranks of those people in our nation who have no health insurance coverage. For the first time in my life, I have no way to seek medical care in this nation. No government program will cover me, and there is no private insurance available to me that I could afford.
In my family, I am the only one now uninsured. Children who make more have good policies and coverage, and even children who make much less qualify for some government help.
My husband is covered by Medicare and by the supplemental plan we carry for him. But I am many years away from qualifying for that program. When I picked his prescriptions up from the pharmacy yesterday, I was grateful to pay just $50 for his portion of that bill.
I have already begun weaning myself off the prescription medications I have. I do not think I can ever get away from the thyroid medication I have taken for many years, but I told the pharmacist to put back another medication last week when I learned it would cost me $30 without coverage. I stopped using the Advair inhaler for my asthma almost three weeks ago, and I will just use the rescue inhalers I have left. And no more cancer checks or preventive care of any kind now until I find a way to secure some coverage.
I heard presidential candidate Mitt Romney say last night that a high percentage of those without health insurance can afford the coverage and just choose not to buy it. I do not believe that. I heard him talk about forcing people to take personal responsibility for their health care costs and coverage. I have done that for all of my adult life. In fact, I made sure all of my six children and my husband never went without coverage, even when some of the children's biological parents remained absent from any effort to support their offspring.
Larry and I came together 32 years ago, each bringing two children to our marriage and each having full custody of those children. We then had two kids together. We worked and had a home and put food on the table for many years before the tsunami of health concerns swept through our lives. By then, thankfully, most of the children were raised. They were spared the front row seats in the collapse.
I remember when my dad was dying from pancreatic cancer almost 13 years ago that I cried out to him as he lay in a coma, "Daddy, please don't leave me here alone." My dad was brave -- a World War II vet who worked hard and gave me a marvelous childhood and a deep faith in God and in the goodness of my country. The loss of his presence in my life has been painful. And the loneliness continues, perhaps deepened now by the realization that my life and the value of my life has been reduced to what an insurance company actuary says and not what I worked for and not what I have achieved.
In the living room, Larry is asleep on the couch -- thank God, he rests. He has gone through so much in the past few years with his health struggles. I cannot sleep well at all now. I wake. I think about the "what ifs" and I worry. I think about 2007 when we appeared in 'SiCKO,' testified before a Congressional sub-committee, and rode a 1980 school bus on a grassroots tour to promote real reform that would save our fellow Americans from our fate.
At a meeting of Colorado health care reform activists yesterday, I heard good and committed folks discussing how to keep political pressure on leaders who don't grasp the depth of the problem. I'll admit, I felt diminished sitting there. I felt like a yoke that weighs on society and on a system gone so wrong. Others can argue from a position of strength and confidence in their positions, and I must argue from a position of weakness and personal fear.
Last night I also listened as presidential candidate John Edwards sought to infuse more passion to his position by saying he understands the plight of the working and middle class in this nation. He proudly pointed out his father in the audience and acknowledged that his family gave him the opportunity to achieve what he has as an adult. He said he wants special interests out of the equation in deciding our national agenda. I'm for that, but I don't see how we can do it when so much money buys so much influence. But somebody has to start somewhere.
So, the journey Larry and I began 32 years ago together with hope and with intensely responsible and committed work will wind down with a very different outcome than we had imagined. We hoped for time to enjoy life and enjoy each other when the back-breaking and mind-numbing work of raising up six children ended. Instead, health concerns zapped that dream and re-routed our plans.
And Daddy left me here after all. But I am not alone. I may be uninsured and unprotected and devalued by the current system. But I am a fighter to the end, and I will continue my life's work to inform every American who still doesn't get it -- presidential candidate or not -- that I am not in this boat because I wanted to be or because I choose to be. I need and want a lifeboat -- the boat I paid for, I changed thousands of diapers for, I cooked meals for, I rode commuter buses to work for, I went to church for, I started cold cars for, I earned my college degree for, I bought insurance for, I paid Congressional salaries for, I fought for -- and that my father risked his life for.
I want what working hard for in America for all of my adult life should have afforded me: just a little peace of mind and to rest next to my husband without terror. I want to know that if I get sick I can go to the doctor. I want a mammogram (now overdue by months). I want the asthma medication that makes me breathe easier. And I do not want the high and mighty judgments of those who never wanted for any of those things.
But most of all I want my now struggling, sometimes cranky love of my life to never, ever think it was his failing that we ended up at this place. I want him to sleep so that when I rise up fighting again in the morning, he has the strength to stand by my side until this battle is won.
Labels: Donna Smith, john edwards, SiCKO
Sunday, December 30, 2007 8:57 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKODENVER – Full of irony. That is how I would best describe 2007. I began this year with fear and anticipation and with a healthy dose of shame thrown in. And I will begin 2008 with more depth of spirit and fewer illusions.
As 2007 dawned, we were still living with our daughter and trying to find ways to stay emotionally afloat. Anyone who saw ‘SiCKO’ knows that there was much more going on in our family than just health care woes. Our financial failure had made us much more vulnerable to the judgments of those around us – including some who found it acceptable to openly assess our lives and offer their superior advice about why we landed ourselves in trouble and how we could lift ourselves out.
Funny how financial weakness seems to make it open season for that sort of thing. Some folks reserved their judgment and waited to see if our appearance in 'SiCKO' would lift us out of our financial problems or at least give us fame and a little fortune. A few even pushed us onward toward whatever the experience would bring our way.
But in early 2007, we could not have seen how our inclusion in Michael Moore’s ‘SiCKO’ and the release of that film would alter that reality for us. Oh we knew the obvious consequences like the vitriolic musings of conservatives who wince and whine and fuss and fume at the mere mention of Michael Moore or the less obvious issues, such as the loss of income and loss of relationships associated with our post-SiCKO-release lives.
By early summer, our lives began to transform. We were now in a small apartment of our own, and the film’s pending release included travel plans to various cities for the openings. New York City, Washington, D.C., Denver, Los Angeles, Atlanta – all in nine days. Ironic how we were not certain where our next rent payment would come from but jetting around the country.
Then in July, I testified for a committee of the House Judiciary in the U.S. House of Representatives. The healing of spirit that had begun on a movie screen in Manhattan blossomed into political resolve and outright commitment.
We began intense political activities including visiting our own Congressional members in Washington, formed a patients' political lobby group (American Patients for Universal Health Care or APUHC), and planned a national health justice vigil.
We took part in the first leg of the SiCKO Cure National Road Show -- traveling to 12 states, 22 Congressional districts and scores of cities from Illinois southward through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. We met thousands of kind and generous Americans who believe the health system is beyond the point where small fixes will suffice.
I flew to speak at Wellesley College in Boston, Seattle Central Community College and in Pueblo, Colorado, where lively discussions of 'SiCKO' brought out students, faculty, providers, patients, pundits and lots of other people who care deeply about making the health care system better for us all.
We end 2007 on the highest of notes tempered with reality. I face joining the ranks of the uninsured of this nation for the first time in my life. My COBRA premiums are too high and the company issuing the policy threatened cancellation when my last payment was a couple days late due to a check sent to me being delayed by harsh winter weather. I probably won't win the reinstatement battle and will have to purchase some sort of high-risk pool coverage or do as so many millions of Americans do know -- go bare and pray.
Larry is covered by Medicare and a supplemental policy which we just found out is doing him little real good and costing us an extra $90 a month. So we'll adjust that and take a chance that we've made the right adjustment. And we're just one American family wondering what will happen with our coverage and our care in 2008 should we get sick.
But we'll also march confidently into 2008 knowing that this year, real political change is possible if we all want it badly enough. Out there on the happy American trails, we hope to see you and add you to our army of new friends and fellow citizens who really do still believe in the power of this democracy and its power to heal even this crisis.
As I told some leary co-workers as we headed for New York back in June for the 'SiCKO' premiere, "So long, I'm off to change the world." Won't you join us? Thanks to 'SiCKO' and to Michael Moore and to a few brave U.S. Congressional members, that's not an empty invitation. We are in this together and thank God we are.
Cheers and Happy New Year to all.
Sunday, December 23, 2007 11:28 AM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKODENVER -- 'Tis the season for Christians to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We reflect on that manger scene more than 2,000 years ago, and we look with wonder on all that our faith and the grace of God has given us.
I join in the spirit of this season, but I also feel a sense of loneliness and sadness when I think about what modern day Christianity has proclaimed as the legacy of our Prince of Peace.
Since my husband and I appeared in Michael Moore’s ‘SiCKO’ this year, we have become even more aware of the inconsistencies between Christ’s message of love and healing and what is preached today in many, if not most, Protestant Christian churches in the U.S.
Pastors, including our own in a small Wesleyan church here in Colorado, pray for our troops and for those in war zones thousands of miles away (as well we should) but will not pray for this nation to care for its sick or its poor. Oh, yes, at Christmastime we may take up special offerings for the unfortunates among us, but we dare not talk about the greed and the profit-mongering that strips the weak of any regress or respect.
In the most conservative, right-wing churches, pastors openly pray about political issues, and the anti-abortion issue tops the list of those purported to be the will of God and his son, the Christ child. Apparently, God wants to protect the unborn American babies but cares not about an Iraqi or Afghani child or mother or father. And the Christ touted by this breed of modern Christian would just as soon allow the sick to die as ask each of us to care for one another or truly love one another, as the Bible taught me many years ago.
I have heard a message of universal and loving care for the sick preached in a church in North Carolina where the African American congregation knows more about hurt and suffering than most of my suburban neighbors can even imagine. But in my own church, we whisper about my participation in the movement to provide universal health care to all – we speak in hushed tones as though we fear the godly might learn of a leper in their midst.
But then I remember what a dear friend of ours preached in her church many years ago on Christmas Eve in 1993. We went to church services that evening to try to reconcile our hurt about a horrific crime in our neighborhood pizza parlor, where our young son Russell worked. Four of Russell’s co-workers were shot and killed and another seriously wounded by a disgruntled worker. Russell had just punched out and come home when the former employee staged his rampage. We were so grateful Russ was spared but struggled with the reasons why the others were not.
Mother Carolyn Davis, Episcopal priest, preached that night that Christ was not born into a perfect, sin-free world. No, she said, “Into this mess He was born.” And she said He came to bring hope and love and the message of true peace among all men and women. Into this mess, indeed.
So this year, I welcome my Christ, once again, into this mess where we seem to be so stuck on selfishness and vanity and greed and where we are often so certain that we are better than those who suffer. And I welcome Him again with hope for a brighter future where the principles of his love are not threatening but embraced in a nation and world so deeply in need of healing.
And, yes, I pray for the day when my church family returns to the true meaning of God’s message for all, where healing the sick and loving the poor is a sign of our strength and our love not of our neighbors’ weakness.
Merry Christmas to all my ‘SiCKO’ friends and family. And to my fellow Americans who know in their hearts and souls that we are better people than what we have been showing one another in recent years, I wish us all a more compassionate and a more prosperous new year. I believe the two ideas are forever intertwined, and as a Christian I believe we can share both with one another. In fact, I think that’s what my Christ hoped we would do – even for the least among us.
Labels: Donna Smith, SiCKO
Thursday, December 20, 2007 1:53 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKOMORGANTOWN, West Virginia -- The SiCKO-Cure Road Show crew spent the day in West Virginia meeting with medical students, physicians, local activists, nurses and community members though a heavy rain fell and threatened to leave flooding in its wake. Just as they have found in every city and state they have visited since leaving Chicago on Nov. 11, the road show team met concerned Americans with thoughtful questions and deep worry. Many mentioned friends or family members with no health care coverage or who had suffered at the hands of the current health care system. And all knew the time for change has been upon this nation for some time.
At West Virginia University Health Sciences Center, the Healthcare-Now road show team led a lively discussion of health care reform issues followed by a showing of an HR676 video produced by the California Nurses Association (CNA) and Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) and a Q&A session.
Friday, December 14, 2007 3:49 PM
By Donna Smith, American SiCKOROCKY MOUNT, North Carolina -- The road show team of the SiCKO-Cure National Road Show rolled into Rocky Mount on Sunday afternoon and met with committed members of the Black Workers for Justice local.
Though none of North Carolina's Congressional members is currently signed on H.R.676, Rep. John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act, those gathered in the local worker hall committed themselves to a future screening of 'SiCKO' and to forming a working group to address political action and to assist local people with health care issues and concerns with current programs.
When the road show crew from Healthcare-Now rolls into a community, it isn't as if one of the current presidential candidates has arrived with a flashy and spirited entourage. The crew brings news of the possibilities for organizing local support for pushing Congressional members for their co-sponsorship, and the road show builds on community and shared vision not celebrity or the political winds of a primary election season.
An interesting commonality in the communities visited from Illinois in mid-November, through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and finally North Carolina has been the solidarity of common people who understand the inherent injustice of the current health care system in the U.S.
As the road shows winds its way toward the final stop on its first regional sweep, the priorities of the American people seem much more inclusive and united than any team member might have imagined. Left behind are groups of leaders and fighters who vow to carry on the push for H.R.676, single-payer, universal health care for all.
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