Real Change News | Agitators, politicians weigh in on health care reform

March 3, 2010
Vol: 17 No: 10

News

Agitators, politicians weigh in on health care reform

via: UW Newslab

Government plan may take years, rep. says

Jim McDermott, congressman from Washington’s 7th District, speaking at a September 3, 2009 health care reform rally at Westlake Mall. Photo by Joe Mabel, courtesy Wikimedia.org

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People are mad. This was the feeling at “Health Care Reform? What’s Next?” – the annual public meeting of the western Washington chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHPWW), a reform advocacy organization. Among the speakers were U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-7th District) and a health care activist who was featured in Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko.”

The Kane Hall lecture room at the University of Washington was packed with people who came to listen to politicians and reformers discuss the need to overhaul the national health care system and create a single-payer program. The audience was composed mainly of middle-aged to senior citizens who above all else expressed anger at the current state of the health care industry and the political ineptitude around reform.

Don Mitchell, M.D., chair of the physicians’ group, quoted a New Yorker Magazine article: “At present the United States has the unenviable distinction as the only great industrialized nation without compulsory health insurance.”

McDermott, who is also a medical doctor, spoke about his experience in the current debates in Congress on health care. He summarized the opposition to a single-payer system, stating, “It has nothing to do with health care, nothing to do with the American people or the common good. It has to do with power and maintaining power. The opposition isn’t about any single policy.”

This drew cynical laughs and hisses from the audience. McDermott finished by talking about the feasibility of a publicly funded single-payer plan, relating it to the struggles of legislation during the Great Depression.

“When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in 1933 there was 25 percent unemployment. We didn’t have anything. It took them two years, until 1935 to pass Social Security,” said McDermott. “The current push for a public option is likely not to happen for some time, years perhaps,” and “we are again making social change that’s the biggest one in the last 100 years, at least, and I am familiar with the slow pace of democracy. We need you to keep agitating us.”

One of those agitators is Donna Smith, a national health care reform activist and member of National Nurses United. She was featured in Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko,” which criticized the health-care industry, and appeared on Bill Moyers’ Journal.

“My family was not selected by Michael Moore to be in this film because we have a unique story. Just the opposite, we were selected to be in his film because we [are] not unique,” said Smith. “Because we represented so many Americans doing what we thought was required of us. We worked hard, raised six children, bought a home and bought health insurance.”

Then her husband began suffering from heart disease. This took a toll on their finances. Then she got cancer. They found themselves in bankruptcy because of their health care bills.

Smith was quick to point out politicians’ failure in protecting her and many other Americans who suffer from health ailments and the financial hardships of health care costs. She respectfully criticized McDermott’s time in office using some statistics calculated by the PNHPWW.

Over 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health care, she said. This amounts to 708 in Washington state, around two people every day, and a total of 14,000 deaths from preventable illnesses in the 20 years McDermott has been in office. About 60 percent of bankruptcies relate to medical debt, and in over 70 percent of those cases the people had health insurance. Almost half a million citizens in Washington state have gone bankrupt in the last 20 years.
Health care legislation should protect every citizen’s health and wealth, Smith concluded.

One person willing to take on the fight is Democratic congressional candidate Larry Kalb, who is running in the Second District in northwest Washington. “When I talk about health care reform I mean kicking health insurers out of the legislation,” said Kalb. “And to remove any third party — government or insurance company — to interfere with a doctor’s sovereignty to diagnose and prescribe therapy.”

Also, during the meeting, Dr. Sarah Weinberg, a member of PNHPWW, was presented with the 2010 John Geyman Health Justice Award. The award is presented to a worthy activist.

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Comments

Kill this bill and start over.

We need health reform desperately, but not this bill.

Don’t be fooled into allowing the underlying 2700 pages bill, which the health care industry crafted, which will allow them to steal at will from us and the US Treasury, to become law.

It will force us to purchase questionable insurance to purchase overpriced care.

The health care industry reported paying $600,000,000. dollars so far for this bill.

What other deals and payoffs have been made?

Real Public Option reforms which would save lives and save money have been kept out of the debate by the President, Democrats, and Republicans, did anyone commit crimes doing it?

Eliot Spitzer should be put in charge of a federal squad of Untouchables to perform hard nosed audits and investigations of Wall Street and Washington which will ascertain what roll criminal activity has had and is having in the destructive behavior which has decimated individual wealth, political fairness, and the United States Treasury.

All 300 million people in the US could receive free public option health care, delivered from government VA system styled hospitals, paid for with sales tax revenues instead of insurance premiums, and it would save $1trillion dollars every year from the $2.6trillion spent last year.

Everyone choosing government, sales tax funded care, could have it free with no restrictions primary, inpatient, outpatient, long-term, mental, ophthalmology and dentistry including medications.

Either Free Public Option or Private Purchase Private Care options for everyone to choose from.

Bill Watson | submitted on 03/05/2010, 6:36pm

Just give us the same healthcare that congress and the senate gets. that will do.

Steve Anthony | submitted on 03/06/2010, 10:57am

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