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I Can See Healthcare From Here
DETROIT - As I wake each morning here in Detroit at the US Social Forum, I glance just a few hundred yards across the way, and I know people have healthcare without regard to financial or other barriers. And it hurts like hell to see the cars "over there" winding along the river inside Canada and know that as I sit here in my own nation, I am without the basic human right to healthcare just because I am an American.
The feeling I get every time I glance that direction is the same one I had when I was a patient in Cuba during the filming of SiCKO. I feel sick to my stomach with anger and sadness and wonder why I have spent the past 25 years of my life fighting for healthcare that in other nations -- other rich nations and other poor nations - is long accepted as what people in a civilized society extend to and protect for one another.
I am gut-punched all over again. I want to curl up in a ball on the floor of my room and weep. I want to rage at the top of my lungs until the pain pours out somewhere else. I want to grab my husband and my kitty and a few of my old family photos and go where my life is valued enough to allow me to seek and receive care when we need it. Yes, I admit it. I am sick to death of the excuses for why we cannot extend healthcare to all without bankrupting folks, and I sometime dream of escape from it all.
At the US Social Forum, the potential to gather many voices and many forces together to move toward healthcare justice in this nation may or may not fully materialize. Sometimes the voices at the microphone calling for transformative health reform are as controlling and power-hungry as those who run the for-profit, medical-industrial complex. The loudest voices speak with officious verbiage and self-righteous certainty that can squeeze out the meek or those without the required activist pedigrees. In many movements for social change, there is an intricate power structure that can be hard to understand and even harder to accept.
Those of us who believe that the for-profit health care system -- not just the for-profit health insurance industry -- must be broken apart to save lives, to save homes, to save families and to save this nation, must get to the point where swimming to the other side of this profit-powered river of healthcare delivery and finally changing this awful, brutal mess means so much to us that we are willing to let it be a people's movement not its own hierarchical system of political ineffectiveness. The mission must be getting to healthcare for everyone and not who gets us there. We have to throw it all in together if we are ever to change it.
The power of the medical-industrial complex in this nation is that the thieves stay in bed with each other against all forces that would break up their game. Providers simultaneously speak ill of insurance giants but then court the best contracts with them. Even providers who claim to want to see transformative change in the system sue patients into bankruptcy to collect deductibles after those lucrative contracts negotiated with insurance carriers leave some portion of the bill unpaid. It isn't just their money and raw greed that buys influence over the system of political power, it's also their intense loyalty to one another and codependence on the sources of their profit margins -- not unlike how the mob operates. Break out of the fold, and they'll break your knees.
And, sadly, thousands and thousands of those who even support single-payer reform in their non-working hours are beholden to the system for their healthy incomes and lifestyles many patients will never attain. It's hard to trust someone whose collection agency is garnishing your wages when they try to say they aren't an inside player in this mess with a vested interest in making changes that protect the money they must have to protect the style of living to which they have become so accustomed.
Too often in movements for huge social change -- like the health reform movement -- we get tied up in the process and who is running the show, which expert is expert enough and who is at the microphone speaking to the lowly, less articulate minions instead of hanging together against the forces that we seek to overthrow. This tragedy is a people's tragedy, a patients' tragedy, a least-among-us tragedy. If we won't even value those voices in the process -- if we believe the stories and the pain no longer matters -- then we do not believe in the basic human right to anything.
I am not sure we can transform the healthcare system in this nation unless we first stand at the edge of the river looking over to healthcare as a basic human right on the other side and share deeply enough the rage and the pain and the frustration of our sisters and our brothers who have been hurting for so long. We must then become united against all forces that would divide us against the primary goal of achieving healthcare for all. We have to rage together against a system that has ravaged so many lives and robbed us of so much human potential along the way -- and we must not rage against one another for not having the perfect approach or the perfect pedigree or the perfect PhD or MD or JD.
The river and a bridge are all that physically separate me today from healthcare as a basic human right and the travesty of healthcare as a privilege of the sufficiently privileged. But the river of social and political change that separates me from healthcare as a basic human right is potentially much more difficult to bridge, unless we embrace and lift all voices. Raising millions of voices for change requires valuing what those voices have to offer to the chorus. All voices in, no voices out.
I am sick to death of fighting this terrible system to secure healthcare for my husband and myself. That struggle has consumed much beyond our health and our meager wealth. I don't ever again want to glance across the way and see relief and know it could have been ours in this nation if only we'd fought the right enemy.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllAmerican voters of all political stripes have lost the ability to connect the dots. I know dozens of Obamabots who tell be that Obamacare is a step toward single-payer when the facts confirm that Obamacare steers us away from single-payer and will increase the cost and lower the quality of the existing dystfunctional health care system.
Me too ray. The fact that so many otherwise intelligent people could be fooled so many times is a product of the most sophisticated and expensive system of propaganda and indoctrination in the history of the world. This starts at a very early age.
The education system encourages regurgitation of information on standardized tests and does not encourage deep analysis and critical thinking.
We are taught to accept Oligopoly Parasite Capitalism called "free market", "rationalized" by Hayek/Friedman neo-liberal economic theory.
We are taught that the USA is the best at everything, we are indoctrinated by the nationalistic "pledge of allegiance" from early childhood. We are taught that our legal system and framework is just and fair. We are taught that our political system is a "democracy" and offers genuine choice and accountability.
We are brainwashed by television, films, commercials, video games and other popular cultures.
I guess it is no wonder that so many people are blind and cannot connect the dots: they are incapable of seeing the dots in the first place.
hey, socialist!
please do not underestimate the powerful prison that is private property...
you list many legitimate issues...
it concerns me that you omit, as so many do, the virtual prison that private property and housing debt create...
when land is prohibited to all but the owner, and the owner frequently unable to purchse but little land for decades of servitude, there is no natural movement to be had...
natural thought is the result of natural movement...
no natural movement, no natural thought...
we remain stationary, and our thoughts are fed to us, constantly...
to be free, ourselves, we must free the land from the hoarding banker...
he who has the gold makes the rules? he who has the land, has the gold...
peace, socialist!
Cheers dubet!
I reckon I lumped the private property worhsip in with the neo-classical/neo-lib economic BS that is revered like a religion in the USA. (as well as the concept of natural resources to be exploited and destroyed for profit). These things all go hand in hand.
Peace! I sincerely wish and hope the future can be peaceful.
I agree -- in my post, I forgot to mention the issue of private property, and land speculators, which is at the core of capitalism in the U.S.
Thanks, dubet, for adding the most important issue to the list!
Land serving as capital -- bought and sold as money.
By 1774, "land in the colonies was virtually all privately owned." ...from A Short History of Capitalism
Thorstein Veblen called land, property, "The great American adventure."
"he who has the gold makes the rules? he who has the land, has the gold..." -- dubet
Exactly!
socialist: I agree with you.
Last week, I met with one of my clients, who is well off, and she is worried that Obama isn't taking care of the BP blowout like he should have done -- on day one, April 20, 2010. Therefore, she is questioning his leadership, and she is worried about the people who live in the Gulf states. Then, she championed his health care bill to me, and I didn't argue with her, I simply laid out some facts, some of the same facts Donna lays out in her article. This woman had NO idea that so many physicians had spoken out, or attempted to speak out in favor of a single payer system of health care for all people in the U.S. Nor did this woman know that doctors and nurses had been arrested for speaking out for single payer health care reform. She's of a generation prior to mine -- and does NOT use the Internet. I suppose she watches Jim Lehrer on PBS, and probably listens to NPR. She and her husband are both liberals, and actually have been quite active politically during their lifetimes. I asked the woman how she could possibly support another upwards shift of wealth to the already massively wealthy executives who run the health industries. Unfortunately, she had NEVER thought about it in exactly that way -- public money padding the pockets of the already wealthy health insurance, etc., executives.
I, myself, fought as hard as I could for single-payer health care, and continue to fight for various issues, and the fight absorbed a lot of my time, too, and those who fought found ourselves stuck, without any representation from our own elected officials. Poll after poll demonstrated that anywhere from 60% to 72% of U.S.A.ans wanted and needed a single payer, a Medicare For All system implemented in this country, but it was Obama, himself, who made the back door deals with the various health industry executives. It was Obama, himself, who disallowed any public discussion of a single payer health care system in the United States. How do we fight these odds? The system is rigged!
I still remember listening to Obama state, unequivocally, that the health care system in the U.S. is the best in the world -- without any challenges from the mainstream media outlets. In truth, the U.S. is rated at #37, with infant mortality rates, from time-to-time, as low as #44 in the world. These ratings hardly qualify the health systems here in the U.S. as #1. To this day, though, I hear people parrot Obama's words -- "We're #1" -- similar to "Yes We Can." During the campaign, many people I know seemed to miss, completely, Obama's intent to escalate the war in Afghanistan. How did they miss his FISA vote? Etc.! There were many reasons that I voted 3rd party. However, many people I know used their selective hearing, and seemed to hear what they wanted to hear, and not much more.
Currently, I'm reading A Short History of American Capitalism, written by Meyer Weinberg. Although, right now, I'm reading about the 1800s, I feel like I'm living in the exact same environment -- or, nearly. The system was rigged, then, and it is rigged, now! I just finished reading Chapter 6, Standards of Living Under Capitalism, 1790-1865. For instance, here's a fact that relates to today's working world -- "From 1840-1854, wages were unchanged, while productivity doubled." In other words, for the duration of this country's history, greater productivity seldom divided down into higher wages for workers. Higher profits were always the name of the game, and those profits went to the investors and shareholders, not to workers, in any kind of real recompense or benefits.
http://www.newhistory.org/
This book is highly informative and Weinberg's documentation is sourced at the end of each chapter. People can read the book online -- free of charge, that is, for anyone who hasn't already read the book. If we can begin to seriously understand our financial system, we might, then, have a chance to change it. Otherwise, all that happens is a little tinkering around the edges. The movements of the 1920s and 1930s understood the system, and once the Great Depression hit the country, and once Roosevelt was elected president, the populist movements were able to make a serious impact on policies and laws that were enacted. However, through the past four decades, unions, etc., have steadily been disempowered, and they have been dismantled, assisted by outsourcing and insourcing of U.S. jobs. This was true in earlier eras, too. This is not a new phenomenon. The authorities, shareholders and politicians have always used similar tactics to disempower working people, who embody the masses of the population. Of course, deregulation over the past four decades added to the speedy decline.
As in times past, all issues today are connected -- from big oil and energy industries, to MIC and defense contractors, to environmental and ecological issues, to health care and insurance industries, to Wall Street and investment banking industries, to our campaign and voting systems, the education system, both lower and higher academic, etc. I could go on and on with the connections.
Donna, I suggest that you get your state of CA to do the same thing we Missourians will be doing on August 2, 2010. Vote to amend the state law to prohibit the federal government from collecting fines for those of us taxpayers who refuse to buy from Big Insurance. Obamacare is a scam that must be repealed not only for that reason but also because it prohibits state and local governments from setting up their single payer plans. Single payer for all Detroit residents? Thanks to Obamacare, it is now illegal for the government of Detroit to provide single payer for all its citizens.
The passage of the "Obamacare" package here in the United States is a perfect example of how the American people at large willingly accept poor to mediocre solutions to problems.
Donna,
Thank you for pointing out the struggle within the activist community to expand beyond pedigreed careerism and actually include people. Sometimes I think the cozy relationship between academia and activism has ruined us, and I say that as a graduate student myself.
"...then we do not believe in the basic human right to anything."
I think that statement totally sums up the situation. When humans themselves become nothing but commodities, to be used, abused, starved, terrorized, imprisoned, and tasered at the whim of those who fancy themselves controllers of commodities, there's not a whole lot left to believe in.
I'm afraid this era we're living through is going to play out to its preordained conclusion. We're powerless against our corporate rulers. Disagree? Then cite just ONE victory achieved in the last 10 years - does it involve jobs? freedom of speech? the social safety net? peace? foreclosure relief? health care for all? environmental protection? consumers' rights? net neutrality? the right to protest our government?
Ah, but I can still get hundreds of channels on the TV and my fourth meal of the day at Taco Bell - success!
You've got the ideas! Damn the duopoly that is holding us hostage, killing many of us in the process.
"We MUST do something about it." YES WE MUST!
First we need to get off the bandwagon the duopoly has designed for us. And then we have to get tough!
I'm tired of this too. We've been working to bring Democrats along with us but they only mover right. I'm finished with them. I will never fall for one of their scams again. Never!
I agree about a general strike, but how to motivate the action is not an easy task. We need people like Donna to lead, and sites like CD to get the word out -- en masse. We need people like Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, etc., those who are consistent in their views and in their writings, to join together in this effort. This is NOT a time for arguing, or worse. The behind-the-scenes fighting within organizations could possibly come to a halt -- egos need to be checked at the door, and power needs to be dispersed to all voices and bodies that join the effort. Most of us know that all of these issues are related. None of the issues are separate.
Today, I see nothing on CD reminding people of tomorrow's "handsacrossthesand" effort to stop offshore drilling. Maybe, CD needs to start an actual activist -- times, dates, and places -- section, a place where people can go to find out where the action is, so to speak.
By the way, I also believe that health care is a unifying issue, that crosses party lines, and also class lines, etc., or could, if we could find ways to mobilize the masses.
I don't think CD can go as far as we would like them to. People on other "liberal" and "progressive" sites would see to it that CD got marginalized. One of my friends at work got banned twice from Huffpost for posting links to CD just because she wanted others to see our strong progressive point of view.
Not much talk on health care has been going on where I'm at after Obama signed the bill into law. The Republicans just say it was bad but have no plans on doing anything about it and the Democrats say that we have to give it time for the fix to take effect. Neither of them support single payer and bringing it up gets me slammed. 10 years from now, it will be a bigger mess and still no one in Washington will put single payer on the table unless by some miracle we get third party representatives, senators, or even the president elected first.
Thanks, Jill for your reply! I almost never read Huffington Post -- and I've heard that people are often banned for speaking out too progressively.
I agree that in 10 years, we will have an even bigger mess to contend with on health care reform, and a host of other issues, too.
I have been voting 3rd party for a number of years, but we don't seem to make much progress.
VP: I also thought about Dr. Margaret Flowers who has put her body on the line, more than once, by being arrested and speaking out for single-payer health care.
In NYC, I have attended rallies and protests in favor of single-payer, but as with the Wall Street protests I have attended, the protesting groups have been small, especially when you consider the size of this city.
I even attended a town hall meeting, where Alan Grayson spoke, and he was always very outspoken about his views on health care reform -- single-payer for all. The meeting was NOT well attended -- it was at the Ethical Society on 64th Street. During the Bush years, I attended countless events that were held there, and they had to turn people away because they couldn't seat everyone. That night, Alan Grayson even arrived early to speak with disabled people who met in another room at the facility.
If you have any ideas about how to gather people together, or who to contact, I would be happy to do everything I can do to help.
It is a matter of life and death -- you are correct. Universal healthcare would improve everyone's life, and relieve so much anxiety and stress for individuals and families, such as loss of jobs and loss of pensions, too! With universal health care, the system would NOT be able to propel people into bankruptcy for simply getting sick.
Thank you Donna!
You are a great leader, even in the midst of much pain and certainly sadness. Same here.
What now? How can we change the rules of the game so that We the People have the power and the oligarchy has to play by our rules for a change?
It can be done! There are far more than us than there are of them. Look at the polls!
We need a consolidated effort, a clear, consistent voice. "We are taking back our power!"
It is time to consider emigration Donna. For you and for me. A work permit in Canada, Citizenship in Costa Rico. You can do better than martyr yourself in these United States.
Donna Smith: "As I wake each morning...I glance just a few hundred yards across the way, and I know people have healthcare without regard to financial or other barriers. And it hurts like hell to see the cars "over there" winding along the river inside Canada and know that as I sit here in my own nation, I am without the basic human right to healthcare just because I am an American."
Keep up the good fight, Donna, if for no other reason than for articles like these. Your paragraph above puts it as succinctly as it can possibly be put: why are we being punished for being American? What made us less than our Canadian siblings, just across the border? If ill, why must we go to hell, and they to heaven?
Why is this happening to us? The answer, it appears, is greed and history. America, at some subtle point in her past, chose greed, while the Canadians chose solidarity against the 'human condition' we all share. The rest was history, as these two choices went their inevitable ways, until Canadians regard univeral healthcare as the most trivially obvious of rights, while Americans step carefully at work and at play, lest they fall through the many cracks that spell economic disaster by ill health. Americans are slaves, and their Canadian siblings can't imagine ever being in that state of slavery.
And whats the unkindest cut of all? Americans find it so stressful living with the vagarities of unleashed capitalism (like for-profit health insurance), that they unload stress by engaging in habits that cuts their life expectancy by decades, compared to Canadians. I worked 10 hours today, and if I lose my job, which appears likely, I'll be thrown out without healthcare at over 50. This isn't stressful at all: can I interest anybody in a McStroke Burger with cheese?
Quite frankly it my considered opinion that the differences that exist between Canada and the United States are directly related to the importance of our ABORIGINAL populations in the early years of the founding of our nation.
It my belief that the further divorced we are from those principles, the more like the American system we will become.
Canada's greatest challenge towards forming a more perfect nation (a process never accomplished but one any nation should also strive for) is addressing the injustices we have visitied on our First Nations people. Until we do that we can not move forwards.(Nor would we "deserve" to)
No nation can be fair or just if it allows a system that allows one group to prosper at the expense of another.
This country has been officially murdering third world peoples for the last 50 years (Southeast Asia, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) Why does anyone think that murderers care about the health and well being of anyone other than their bloated fat cat friends and families? We have to stop the killing before we can start the healing.
I think the health care system is failing. It fails more people everyday. It cannot provide care without creating more disease. Even Medicare will not pay for healthcare related disease. It is costing billions of dollars and it gets worse with each day. Old people just die and not in a good way because well the because is become more evident as we speak.
Yeah, well you can keep your anti-Semitic friends, wholesome Donna. Including the ones who frequent this board. And have coopted every goddamn domestic issue in the United States to their fanaticism about GAZA and the narcissism of their idiot writers like Abby Zimet. Give yourself a pat on the back for kneeling before their cause in desperation of support. Not to mention the progressive democrat's promotion of Helen Thomas, while her statements have been condemned by the ADL, for one.
France got millions in the street the other day because their benefits were slightly threatened. Did commondreams or any of the progressive press cover these demonstrations? NO.
Why?
Plus, why can't we get millions in the street for single payer and when 65% of the American public have supported it, along with 55% of American doctors?
One of the reasons is because the unions are sold out on single payer. They give it lip service, but when push comes to shove, they're worried about their health plans, which are doing pretty good compared the rest of America.
If you don't have the interests of the country's major organizing bodies behind you 100%, you're not going to produce a millions plus showing, as they do in France, where the unions are much stronger.
You still haven't told the public, Donna -- what did Barack tell John and you about H.R. 676, exactly?
Isn't it nice that the Democratic party has a wing called "progressive democrats" so they can always give them the fucking heave ho when it matters.
"All stick together." That's not what I heard heroic Ann Wright say, during her interview with "Grit T.V."
When are you going to come clean, Donna and John Conyers ?
I can't see healthcare from here AT ALL!
You're both there to get votes for the Democratic Party.
And Donna, you're not the only one who's been working for healthcare. Or taking shit for it.
Have fun with Ann Wright.
"The loudest voices speak with officious verbiage and self-righteous certainty that can squeeze out the meek or those without the required activist pedigrees."
A power outage prevented me from reading this article sooner, but that thought deserves a belated, "When you're right, you're right!"
I tend to react negatively to facile "keep your chin up!" bromides, but I'll throw it in the pot anyway if it makes you feel better.
The bottom-line answer to the critical difference between the U.S. and Canada is that we live in, and are governed by, a Corporatocracy!
All of our "Peoples' Representatives" have in fact been bought by corporations. And they are merely shills for their benefactors. We actually have a "Shadow Government" that pays no attention whatsoever to the real needs or will of the population.
Nothing about this will ever change until we define the abhorrent practice of "lobbying" for what it really is - BRIBERY!!! Bribing a public official has always been regarded as a CRIME!!!!!
And it should be prosecuted for the crime that it actually is!!!!