Every day in cities and towns across the United States, Americans with insurance are denied medically necessary care by a for-profit insurer. A treatment, test, medication or even a surgical procedure ordered by their physician is denied, all in the name of increasing the bottom line.
Many of these people, already depleted by sickness and perhaps lacking a relative or advocate to help them fight these massive denial machines, give up and accept the cruel and often deadly denial as a sad fact of life in the United States.
Others wage lonely and often unsuccessful battles against these giant corporations, with little guarantee of success.
PUBLIC OPTION PLEASE wants to bring some of your stories to the attention of America. We might even be successful in reversing particularly egregious denials as we did in the tragic case of Nataline Sarkisyan.
Have you been denied necessary medical care? Please share your story with us. We'll keep your information confidential, and if we think we can help, we'll contact you.
And on a lighter note, we have more big news to tell you about!
So, you're an artist? Or maybe you just like to doodle. You want to make some history? Then get involved and submit a design to the Public Option Please art contest. The winning design could become one of the iconic images of the healthcare rights movement.
POP (Public Option Please), our health care reform advocacy campaign, is announcing an arts contest. Inspired by artists behind the successful "Manifest Hope" project, the effort is designed to provide a vehicle for artists to help reframe the debate surrounding health care.
Whereas Congress is focused on bending cost curves and protecting insurance company profits, artists can express the moral case for health care as a human right. They can help to shape a vision of the future where 44,000 people don’t die each year in the United States for want of health care.
Arianna Huffington, Jesse Dylan (yes, he's Bob Dylan's son), Marshall Ganz, Arlene Holt Baker, and Aaron Rose have signed on as judges as POP – Public Option Please, today launched the first ever visual arts contest to promote the Public Option. Inspired by artists behind the successful "Manifest Hope" project, the effort is designed to cut through the DC "insider" clutter and provide a vehicle for artists to make the moral case for health care reform and take part in the debate currently raging in Congress.
Here's a little more on our exciting (and may I add, esteemed) panel of judges:
* Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post
* Jesse Dylan, director the Emmy Award-winning video, YES WE CAN SONG, inspired by Barack Obama
* Arlene Holt Baker, Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO
* Aaron Rose, film director, art show curator, musician and writer responsible for the Beautiful Losers art movement and world tour
* Marshall Ganz, renowned organizer and lead architect of the Obama campaign’s community organizing efforts
The contest will run from now until October 31. The judges will select a first, second and third prize and then the public will be able to vote for a people’s choice award. The first prize winner will receive $1000, 2nd prize will receive will receive $750, and third prize will receive $500. The public choice award will also receive $750. The works will be featured on posters, t-shirts and stickers and proceeds with go to POP4All, a non-profit organization that works for ongoing health care reform.
"Artists have a unique ability – by speaking to us in an honest, engaging, emotional language – to remind us of the human side of the healthcare issue," said artist and film director, Jesse Dylan.
Contest entries can be uploaded on the POP website. The contest rules are available here.
Let me leave you with this thought.
In 1975, the artist and designer Milton Glaser was asked to revive the image of New York.
At that time, the city was viewed as a crime-ridden, unfriendly, hostile place, this is true, I lived in New York during those bleak days. There was an urgent need to change this perception, and the "I Love New York" logo was born.
We're hoping we'll find the art that will help define this historic moment for our country, and that we'll leave future generations a memorable image of this epic struggle for a basic human right.