The real show was outdoors - what the White House Forum on Healthcare left out

RN4MERCY · Apr 8, 2009

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/7/717622/-the-real-show-was-outdoorswhat-the-white-house-forum-on-healthcare-left-out

[color=#242424]the real show was outdoors - what the white house forum on healthcare left out[color=#242424] [color=#fc8f19][color=#242424]
[color=#242424]by national nurses movement [subscribe]
[color=#fc8f19][color=#242424]share this on twitter - the real show was outdoors - what the white house forum on healthcare left out[color=#fc8f19] [color=#fc8f19][color=#242424]
[color=#242424]tue apr 07, 2009 at 03:40:04 pm pdt
[color=#242424]hundreds of people, nurses, doctors, medical students, grassroots activists, and california school employees association members gathered in downtown los angeles monday to deliver an unequivocal message about the nature of the healthcare reform americans so desperately need.
[color=#242424]for those inside the tightly scripted white house forum or anyone watching the live feed on line, that message was blacked out. inside the pre-selected speakers kept within the accepted framework: we need reform, costs are out of control, americans are hurting, and preventive care will solve all our problems ('fraid not). unfortunately nothing proposed in the forum is likely to cure this crisis.
[color=#242424]- [color=#242424]national nurses movement's diary :: ::

yeah, it was a great rally. one report estimated that there were a thousand of us out there. what the white house forum left out was the needs of "we, the people." i don't know that we should've expeccted better than the "business as usual" approach" seeing as how the host was none other than gov. schwarzenegger, who twice vetoed our single payer bill in california. what an arrogant and shameful thing to do, leaving over 7 million men, women, and children to fend for themselves and do without in the wealthiest state in the nation. imagine if nurses and doctors took care of the patients who manage to make it through the door into a hospital in the same way the administration is addressing the health care crisis. "yeah, you have a problem. i know how to take care of it, but all i can do for you is talk about it. there, now doesn't that make it all better? the insurance company says it feels better already.":(

allnurses Guide · Apr 8, 2009

Put Single Payer on the table, six videos -

RN4MERCY · Apr 9, 2009

Put Single Payer on the table, six videos -

Thanks, herring, for posting this link. I watched and heard a lot of thoughtful and articulate people make brief speeches in support of Single Payer health care. One of the speakers was Geri Jenkins, RN. She is a member of the Council of Presidents for CNA/NNOC , and when she spoke, many of us shared how she just makes us so proud to be nurses. She's a passionate, eloquent, and no-nonsense advocate. The insurers and their guilty accomplices were hiding with their shameful delays and denials inside the arena and spoke nary a word about single payer. Why? Because the currrent system works for them. Their ability to make a profit depends on their ability to control the system. It's become so apparent from listening to all the facts outside, that we don't have a system of health care that works for the rest of us.

I wish just one of the insurance representatives would have the guts to come out and engage in an intelligent debate, but alas, not a one would dare to stand between nurses and their patients who need care. I read a report in the paper that ended by saying a single payer system would decimate the insurance companies. My heart continues to bleed for how the insurers have decimated and destroyed the lives of so many. Try watching the mother of Nataline Sarkisyan without shedding a tear, as she recounts the horror and pain of watching her daughter die because an insurance company bean counter denied the life-saving treatments recommended by her expert doctors. Even people who think they have good insurance are not safe. The best way to prevent this from happening again to another family is for all of us to stick together and make sure Medicare is available for us all. The insurers deserve worse than decimation! And we deserve guaranteed healthcare.

Honnête et Sérieux · Apr 14, 2009

And we deserve guaranteed healthcare.

The gov't cannot guarantee healthcare.

They can't even guarantee a much simpler scheme; Social Security, and they admitted it on my last social security statement, saying that current collections (which are 12.4% of our paychecks), will only be enough to cover 75% of our scheduled benefits by 2041. Some say it will happen much sooner, and I seriously doubt the gov't's math skills.

They also encouraged seniors to purchase private insurance to supplement soc. sec. and medicare because they said it wouldn't be able to cover their long-term care expenses...ironically while one of the reasons our neighbors to the north have such long waiting lists is because so many of their hospital beds are populated with patients who can't get into a long-term care facility.

So how can you advocate to expand our socialized system and demonize private insurance when that same socialized system is encouraging their recipients to go to private insurers for solutions?

MN BigJ · Apr 14, 2009

Why do we deserve healthcare?? I deserve a new car!. I deserve my house to be paid for! I deserve a new TV! I deserve anything I want!!

Kind of crazy isn't it?

allnurses Guide · Apr 15, 2009

Why do we deserve healthcare?? I deserve a new car!. I deserve my house to be paid for! I deserve a new TV! I deserve anything I want!!
Kind of crazy isn't it?

Not crazy at all.

Without healthcare, a new car, a paid for house, a new TV, and everything else you want life is impossible. :lol2:

Atheos · Apr 15, 2009

We would have social security if it was used for what it was actually meant for and not to sustain people for decades...

RN4MERCY · Apr 15, 2009

:idea:

"America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please."
P.J. O'Rourke

:icon_rollAmerica is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality. ~Adlai Stevenson

Honestly and seriously,

All I have to say to you is that I believe we must love justice, do mercy, and walk humbly. How long are we going to let the unjust, unmerciful, and arrogant profiteers of the insurance industry get away with ripping us off? Profiteers who've gotten away with doing whatever they please (raising premiums, co-pays, denials, recissions, exclusions) at the expense of the sick and injured who need medically necessary health care.

We the people should be working with a local, state, and national organizations to hold government accountable. I don't think we can afford not to have a single payer system of health care in this country. We can do it, and we have to work with and through our elected representatives to tell the special interests that we've had enough! Here's something else we've had enough of, the cost of war.

On the subject of Single Payer health care, I greatly respect the opinions of Dr. Don McCanne and he wrote a recent commentary that came to mind in response to your post:

It is true that some nations do use private insurers. But private insurers in their countries organized into social insurance programs serving the public good have almost nothing in common with private insurers in the United States that shun organization in order to serve their own business interests. Adding a few regulations to our current fragmented system will increase costs but cannot transform a self-serving business model into a public-serving social insurance model. We really have only two effective choices that would achieve both of our goals. We can dismiss our current private insurers and bring in new private insurers with a mission of serving the public good, but that is the most expensive model of reform, and it compromises equity and efficiency. Our other choice would be to eliminate our fragmented financing system and replace it with a single payer national health program. That would allow us to constrain prices and cap expenditures while achieving our other goal of providing all necessary care for everyone.

MN BigJ · Apr 16, 2009

Not crazy at all.
Without healthcare, a new car, a paid for house, a new TV, and everything else you want life is impossible.

My whole point is: why should the government pay for it?? or better yet, Why should the government stop at healthcare? I deserve it all, and for it all to be paid for with someone elses tax dollars.

MN BigJ · Apr 16, 2009

By the way, why is it that people keep saying how horrible insurance companies are and that they shouldn't be involved in our lives so much, yet are pushing for more government control in our lives.

As I said earlier, a government that is large enough to give you everything, is powerful enough to take it all away.

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Apr 16, 2009

My whole point is: why should the government pay for it?? or better yet, Why should the government stop at healthcare? I deserve it all, and for it all to be paid for with someone elses tax dollars.

Basic health care falls into the category of needs, not wants. It's not a big-screen TV or a new car, for Pete's sake---it's a necessity, like food, water, shelter, clean air, and sanitation. Without it, we don't survive long, or well.........so where do people get the idea that it's a "luxury" item that only "deserving" people should have access to?

No one really enjoys paying taxes, but we do it knowing that it's the price we pay for a civilized society. Few of us would begrudge our fellow citizens the services those monies provide, e.g. police, fire protection, roads and highways, schools etc., and even fewer would decline them in our own time of need. So why is health care so different? It began to go downhill when it was turned into a business............and attitudes such as "I got mine---you can just go take a flying leap at a rolling donut" really don't speak well for their subscribers. It must be nice to live in a dream world where health care isn't an issue (at least not as long as one HAS it), but denying there is a problem certainly contributes nothing of value to attempts to solve it.

Again I say, health care reform WILL happen at some point in the next generation, because it has to. There's no way around it. And putting it off, or scrabbling together parts of the current 'system' with a couple of new ideas, will not work. There are some 76 million 50- and 60-somethings coming into their 'golden years', and for many of us those years will not be kind. We are stressed beyond reason, overworked, under-relaxed, fat, tired, cynical, and going broke.......do younger people really think the majority of us will not need any care when we reach our 80s and 90s? What are you going to do with us when Medicare/Medicaid go bankrupt and no private insurer will touch us with a ten-foot pole---put us all on ice floes and send us out into the Atlantic Ocean to die of exposure? (Actually, it would be preferable to languishing in a nursing home, but that's just me;)).

Oh, and BTW I am not being dramatic or sarcastic. There are legitimate concerns and hard questions here that a LOT of people share. We may not agree on the perfect solution, but at least we acknowledge that there is a problem........and that's half the battle won.