The tradition of brave and proud nurse activism for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model continued today thanks to Janice Webb, RN, and her nurse intervention at the convention of the health insurance industry in San Diego, AHIP. They’re the lobbyists for the insurance giants who make money by denying care to the very patients that Janice cares for at UC-San Diego Medical Center.
As nurses last month shook up the Senate Finance Committee, which led to an important meeting with Senate power broker Max Baucus’ office this week, Nurse Webb took her protest to directly challenge those who are at the main cog in our broken and dysfunctional health care system.
With thousands of well-paid insurance executives around her waiting to hear from Jeb Bush and Howard Dean, Janice marched up to the stage at the San Diego Convention, where the moderator was droning on about how hard AHIP is working to find healtcare solutions — meaning legislation that will protect their position at the center of power over our health and the profits they make from the pain and suffering of patients.
Taking the mike, Janice held up a copy of an $11 billion dollar check, Janice then declared, to a mix of cheers and boos, “Nurses have the solution. You all need to get out of healthcare. We took up a collection and want to present this check to you to go away so we can finally institute a humane single-payer system for this nation…everybody in, nobody out!”
Of course it did not last long. Burly security men rushed the stage, grabbed Janice and a companion, and hustled them off. Hysterical AHIP security guards angrily denounced Janice, and demanded her arrest.
Instead, the police officers smiled, asked Janice if she had any warrants out, and started to describe the healthcare cutbacks they’re facing due to SDPD’s trouble with affording ever-rising insurance premiums, and escorted her outside where she was given a raucous welcome from a crowd of nurses, teachers, patients, doctors, and progressive democrats.
Taking the mike again–this time to the cheers of the crowd, Janice said, “They refused my check of course, but they’ll take every bit of money my patients can come up with. Insurance corporations, nurses and patients want you out of our lives! How many lives ruined by these corporate executives? How long will Washington let them deny care, delay care, cancel policies, buy off Washington policies, and masquerade their marketing plans as healthcare reform? Forcing people to subsidize insurers is NOT healthcare reform.”
Janice was followed by Jeffrey Gordon, a Physicians for a National Health Program member, who brought along a half-dozen of his patients who have been bankrupted or sickened by their insurance companies. You probably saw the report today from PNHP how unpayable medical bills, and income lost as a result of illness, now account for a shocking 62 percent of personal bankruptcies, a number that is rising. Too bad the healthcare reform bills now being framed in the Senate won’t solve that problem — in fact, it will likely make it worse by forcing more people to buy insurance without effective cost controls for ever rising premiums and out of pocket costs.
Gordon told the crowd, “As I was driving here I knew I was in the right place because there’s a whole flock of corporate jets lined up right over there. We’re here to tell AHIP that it’s time to get rid of their jets.” He added, “The power of those people across the streets keep the people in Washington from talking about the real problems in healthcare in this nation. And if you don’t make the right diagnosis there is not cure–which is to get rid of the health insurance industry.”
Jim Gothe, a board member of the California Teachers Association followed Gordon’s point, saying “the bad news is that they’re paying for this conventino with money from students, teachers, retiress. What sense does that make? Students are the future of this state!…CTA believes healthcare is a human right for all people.” The local CTA rep, Kathy Rallings continued his point saying, “My one-year-old son had open heart surgery when he was 3 months old. You know what that means? He has a preexisting condition FOREVER. That means his life will be spent following healthcare…not his dreams.”
It’s not too late. We will get single-payer in this country because we cannot care for all our patients while also subsidizing AHIP. Help it along. Tell Max Baucus that he should still hold a hearing on single-payer, or co-sponsor one with the health committee to provide a real side by side comparison with the plans they are proposing, so the American people can judge for themselves which approach will really produce a reform plan that covers everyone, improves quality of care, and includes genuine cost controls — and gets the hands of AHIP off our necks once and for all.
Single payer activists from coast to coast have done a great job getting the message to Congress, but we have to keep it up. Please Fax Baucus and other committee chairs today. Healthcare is too important to let Washington get wrong.