The Short End of The STiCKO

My husband Larry, another American SiCKO, is working on seeing a cardiologist who supports universal health care because of what that support says about the physicians' motivations, but that's not easy. Physicians for a National Health Program only has three cardiologists as members listed as living in Colorado, and one of them has already retired. Cardiologists are rather fond of the current health care funding system and many would be even more happy with mandates that every American purchase insurance. The pool of potential Larrys would grow exponentially.


The vascular doc charges him plenty and sends him to an orthopedic doc who does not even complete an examination but orders an MRI and charges $300 for the one minute “interview” he has with Larry. He concludes that Larry’s back is fine (he didn’t order an MRI of the hips as he doesn’t treat hips), so when Larry asks “What about my hips?” the response is to refer him yet again.

But what did PT Barnum say about a patient – oops, I mean a sucker -- born every minute? Was he a cardiologist?

By the way, Larry is switching all of his cardiology business (and the insurance payments) to a cardiologist who supports single-payer, universal health care. He thinks other patients should do the same. Let's walk the walk together.

Labels: APUHC, Donna Smith, Larry Smith, PNHP, SiCKO

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Heartbreak and Hope

Labels: andy bales, SiCKO, union rescue mission

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'She left so we could make a better life for others'

By Dawnelle Keys, American SiCKO

LOS ANGELES -- Life was hard for me after Mychelle died. She was the only girl in the family since I was born.

My mother has nine grandsons now so you could imagine how happy the family was to have a girl. It devastated the whole family when we lost her. She was my little angel when she was born and she had such a beautiful smile and a warming spirit. I had to deal with the fact that I had to still celebrate Mychelle's birthday Oct. 10 every year without her.

But I still needed and wanted to be there for my son Devion who shares the same birth date but is four years older. Mychelle and Devion were just like twins, and when she died he knew instinctively though he wasn't even at the hospital with us. My sister in-law said he let out a scream at the exact time his little sister went into cardiac arrest, and my mother’s neighbor came to check on him. He still struggles with it everyday.

For me it was a struggle to get up in the morning and go to work and face life without her. I was placed on medication and excused from work for five months.

But the medicine was Prozac, and I became so depressed that I was to the point that I did not want to live and even thought of suicide.

A family friend called and questioned me because she had heard I was acting strange, and she asked about my medication. Once I told her I was on Prozac she suggested that I call the doctor and request to be taken off of it. She worked for a law firm that was handling cases where people on Prozac had attempted and some committed suicide and even worse – some committed murder. That phone call is what saved my life, and I know I would not be here today had God not sent my angel through my friend on the other end of that phone.

Well I phoned the doctor and he only wanted to reduce my dosage, so
it was up to just me and God. I asked him to deliver me without any ill side
effects.

Now not a day goes by that I don't think of Mychelle, but it's not a struggle
because I know there was a purpose and reason why she left us. I could not
see it then but now I know that she left us so that we could make a better life
for those who are in the same position as I was in.

My faith is so strong and I know that God does not make mistakes. Even when we were in the ambulance on our way to Kaiser, I kept talking to my little girl and even though she did not answer me with words, but with moans, she was at peace and with God.

That's how I’ve been able to make it this far. My trust in people has not changed, but when I deal with people in the health care field I have a total different opinion.

I had the chance to experience it once again when my son Devion was involved in a roll-over accident last year. I was not allowed to see him until I gave them my insurance card and was told he had a head injury.

Once I spoke with the doctor, I was informed there was a foreign object showing on his X-ray, and the doctor said he would do a scan. Well, the nurse felt it was glass that would wash out once he cleaned it. Devion was discharged without the scan and complained of headaches After two months and several doctor visits, my son was sent to a surgeon who operated two days later and removed a large piece of glass from next to his skull. He continues to have migraine headaches and has to take medication.

My feeling will never change until something is done about the health care system that is so broken. Too many lives have been lost, and it's all about money.

My family is my biggest support, and they are so proud of me. My mother has been
there since day one, and you all will see her again when we come to Washington, D.C., in September for the candlelight vigil.

Since 'SiCKO' was released, I have been called ignorant by some people. It's been said to me that Mychelle was not denied treatment and that MLK Hospital did the right thing by sending her to Kaiser and not treating her.

But I will keep fighting ‘till the end because I made a promise to my daughter that I would not give up until there was a change.

Labels: Dawnelle Keys, MLK Hospital, SiCKO

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California Speaks: We Want Single Payer

...by Senator Sheila Kuehl

On August 11th, 2007, at the culminating and boisterous OneCareNow rally in Los Angeles, as well as eight coordinated “listening” events around the state, sponsored by Blue Shield and the California Endowment, among others, a random selection of thousands of Californians spoke out overwhelmingly in favor of major health care reform.

At the largest rally of the year, more than two thousand advocates, patients, nurses, doctors and universal health care fans gathered on the steps and lawns of the Los Angeles City Hall to excoriate a health care system that does nothing but devastate working families with systematic cancellations, denials and delays in care. This doesn’t promote health, it isn’t care, and it certainly isn’t a “system”-- it’s traumatizing and often deadly for people who thought they would be given care, but, instead, got nothing but a tangle of insurance red tape. Convinced that single-payer universal health care is the only hope for fixing our broken health care system, they gathered to support SB 840 (Kuehl), the only truly universal health care plan proposed in legislation that is shown to contain costs, improve health care quality and allow Californians total choice of their doctors and hospitals.

Perhaps by design, on that same Saturday, health care foundations (including Blue Shield Foundation, Kaiser Family Foundation and the California Endowment) spent over $4 million on an event originally spun as an exercise in "deliberative democracy", but in reality was carefully structured to control discussion, in order to ask randomly selected participants to discuss and “vote” on their preferences for healthcare reform.

Naming the event CaliforniaSpeaks, organizers claimed the event would bring together thousands of Californians to discuss their perspectives on the current health reform proposals still under debate in Sacramento, yet the agenda was careful to exclude single payer from the discussion. Organizers of the event told us the reason that they didn’t include single payer was because the governor said he wouldn’t sign it.

Apparently when they said the event was designed to give Californians the chance to set the health care agenda, what they actually meant was that the event would be an opportunity for the people to jump in line with the Governor’s healthcare agenda. As is often the case, the people had a different idea—they did, in fact, jump; they jumped out of their seats demanding that single payer and SB 840 be included in the discussion, forcing the organizers to tack the issue on at the last minute at the end of the day.

The fact that participants were forced, on their own accord, to demand the inclusion of single payer at the CaliforniaSpeaks events clearly indicates that the conventional political message, mostly propagated by the health insurance companies, has yet to understand that two decades worth of traumatized patients and families, along with an even higher consciousness of our failings set out in Michael Moore’s new film, “SiCKO”, has changed health reform politics forever.

Consider the overwhelming standing ovation that Steve Skvara received (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5SSyS5n6U4) at last Tuesday’s Democratic Presidential Debate when he asked, chocking back tears, “What’s wrong with America?”, describing how his family lost their guaranteed retiree health coverage when the company who owed it to him filed for bankruptcy. Skvara’s story immediately resonated with millions of Americans across the nation, and he became an instant online celebrity. Why? Because he clearly illustrated our broken health care system and the abuses of corporate greed. Skavara’s story is one of thousands that are positioned to spark the simmering anger that a broad spectrum of Americans feel toward our insurance based non-system.

California families are becoming so hurt and so incensed at insurance company greed and abuse that they are increasingly willing, like nurse Cynthia Campbell’s husband, to pick up a megaphone and plead “Don’t Kill My Wife” in front of Blue Shield’s headquarters. And the transformation crosses the political spectrum. Art DeWerk, the Police Chief for the central valley town of Ceres, spoke out recently in favor of single payer as he described the helplessness he felt after his wife was unable to get timely access to routine medical care as she battled cancer.

These and other stories are found all too often in a health care system where the only competition is between insurance companies focused only on how much risk they can avoid, instead of the more appropriate competition between direct health care providers for quality service, driven by a single payer system that allows total patient choice of doctors and hospitals. And stories like those set out above, as well as others, even worse, will continue until we ditch the “system” that spends 30% of every health care dollar simply to weed out those of us who are sick enough to need our coverage and move to a real universal healthcare system that eliminates the middleman and returns decision making in healthcare to doctors and patients.

By the end of Saturday’s “listening” event, after everyone had discussed the intricacies of the incremental plans, single payer surprised the organizers by polling better than the others, with significantly more people saying they would support it under any condition. For those who supported a generic single payer system, but with conditions, SB 840 was, in fact, the only plan that actually met all the conditions set out by the discussants. For example, 53% of the participants statewide said they would support single payer if they could choose their own doctors and hospitals. SB 840 guarantees this. In contrast, both mandates which define the Governor’s policy paper and the Speaker of the Assembly’s bill, AB 8, received support by the discussants only if there were caps on costs and premiums. In fact, neither proposal currently includes this provision.

Both the rally in Los Angeles and CaliforniaSpeaks showed us that the people of California are way ahead of the Governor, as well as the Speaker, with regard to healthcare. At the end of the day, more participants felt that quality of care shouldn’t depend on how much money you have, that everyone should have access, and that greed should be kept out of the health care system.

Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, later that same day, the Governor was quoted on a Fresno news station as saying he would sign SB 840 “as soon as we have the money for it”. Of course, the Lewin Report, studying the factors set out in the bill, has already shown how the plan will be funded. But, whether the Governor’s pronouncement signals a serious shift in his thinking, it certainly acknowledges the political momentum that SB 840 has garnered. I welcome the conversation on funding, because we’ve got the money. SB 840 can easily be achieved with our current health care spending, personal, employer and state and federal. It would use the money wasted by the insurance companies on denying care to provide it, to all Californians, without co-pays or deductibles, for one affordable premium each year. What we need is the political will to catch up with the will of the people of California.

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The Growing Storm III: 'SiCKO' Draws Activists Together from Seattle to D.C.

Part 3: 'SiCKO' Seeds an Expanding Movement

by Donna Smith, American SiCKO

DENVER -- Today I heard about another incredible post-'SiCKO' event in Seattle. Over 200 people packed the largest room at Seattle Central Community College to hear from a panel of inspirational caregivers, activists, and public health advocates. John Geyman of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) spoke as well as a nurse whose experiences left people in tears.

A volunteer who traveled to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina also spoke at the gathering. She sustained major burns from a propane accident and with no insurance, is now thousands in debt. That sounded all too familiar after watching the 9/11 first responders' stories in 'SiCKO.'

The panel was a success, not only because of the wonderful speakers who were able to tie together different aspects of public health, but because of the overwhelming number of energized people who were ready to become an active part of the movement for universal healthcare.

How awesome is this? From one Washington to the other. People are organizing for change and for action.

Before I left Washington, D.C., I sat back and marveled at the beginnings of this social revolution and how a movie like 'SiCKO' can play a role in that process. Will my generation finally take its blinders off, step up to the plate yet again and come back to the political table in force? "Make Love Not War," we cried so long ago. Are we now ready to cry “Health Care Not Warfare?”

As I sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over the Mall and the Reflecting Pool, I imagined what Martin Luther King, Jr., saw all those years ago. A sea of people – a sea of Americans -- joined to rally for change. It did not happen overnight. King’s dream of a better nation continues to fuel a passion for political activism, a non-violent transformation and reclamation of government by and for the people.

'SiCKO' is drawing us out of our homes and drawing many of us out of our shame and despair. And the tide is rising from coast to coast. People leave movie theaters energized for change and angry at delay.

Join up with one of the groups out there working or start your own and connect with us.

We stand at the ready from sea-to-shining-sea, waiting for our opportunity to take to the streets joined together to see that the human right of health care is granted to every American.

Here’s a partial list of groups so you – yes, you – can join in this movement. It’s time to reclaim America.

1. HealthCare-Now
2. Physicians for a National Health Program
3. Progressive Democrats of America
4. Code Pink
5. California Nurses Association
6. ROOT
7. APUHC - American Patients for Universal Health Care - email apuhc@comcast.net

Labels: CNA, Code Pink, Donna Smith, HealthCare-Now, PDA, PNHP, ROOT, SiCKO

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