What will it take for Congress and the White House to recognize that "affordability" is not the only problem with our broken and dysfunctional healthcare system?
Thanks to Donna Smith of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and one of the activist stars of Michael Moore's last film "SiCKO", which all of our legislators and the President ought to watch again, for reminding us of the patients who are all too often missing in this debate.
Here's Donna's latest report on some of the very real victims of our broken, disgraceful, insurance-based system:
Jenny Fritts was 24 years old. Jenny lived with her husband Sean for the past five years, and together they had a little girl named Kylee, 2. Jenny was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child – a beautiful, baby girl.
Jenny is dead. Jenny’s unborn baby is dead. They died because they were turned away for appropriate care at a for-profit hospital because they did not have health insurance. Sean rushed Jenny back to another hospital when her symptoms became even more severe, and he lied about having insurance to get her in the door. She was placed on a respirator in intensive care, but she didn’t make it. She died. And so did her baby.
They become two more of the more than 45,000 Americans who die preventable deaths due to our broken healthcare system every year. Two more. Mother and child.
And the tragedy doesn’t end there. Sean has been very depressed since he lost Jenny and their baby. The rest of his family and friends are worried about him. But he cannot get treatment either. He doesn’t have insurance.
You can watch their story here:
These are our killing fields. In America. In October 2009. In Barack Obama’s America. That land full of hope and promise for those who can afford that hope and promise. Yet few in our government offices react as one might think you would when hearing of Jenny and the baby and Sean and Kylee.
I read these stories every day on the CNA/NNOC healthcare website.
Patients send their stories to the nurses in cascading waves of anger and frustration and desperation. They want someone to listen and to give a damn. And they want someone to help.
But there are so many. The nurses advocate for their own patients whenever they can. And when it’s possible, nurses take to the streets and to the phone to try to protest. But the numbers of patients swell every day.
Many are like Jenny and Sean and have no insurance at all or have lost their insurance when they lost jobs or because an employer cannot afford to offer it.
Some are insured and fighting insurance companies for care that their doctors have ordered.
Rich Zandlo, 38, suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and is currently surviving off just 19 percent of his lungs. Rich, who lives in Phoenix, needs a lung transplant at UCLA, but his insurer will not cover the transplant if it is done out of state.
His family is looking for help raising money to get him temporary housing and care in California so he can be available to be on the operating table when the call comes. Find out more here, and what you can do to help.
Amanda (Tannery) Field, 30, has thrombocytosis and doctors are also working her up for Budd Chiari syndrome which is preventing the liver from draining properly. Amanda and her husband both work full time, and she has a 13 year old son to support. Due to the illness, she has been unable to work recently, due to the hospital stays. Aetna, her insurer, has denied help due to a lapse in coverage while she was unemployed.
Amanda's family also has a website where they are trying to raise the quarter million dollars necessary for a liver transplant. They have raised only 7 percent of the funds needed to be evaluated for a transplant. Doctors are currently working on a variety of interim measures to keep her alive.
This is very real life and death. Mothers and babies. Young and old. The profit-takers know no boundaries for their greed, and our killing fields are filling with the innocents.
The media should cover Jenny’s death and her baby’s death with as much intensity as any boy in a balloon drifting over the Rockies. When we are forced to confront what we are allowing to happen in homes and clinics and hospitals all across this land, we will perhaps find it less easy to dismiss as anomaly.
Healthcare is a basic human right. It's long past time to stop the human rights transgressions against our people -- all of whom deserve equal protection under the law of their human right to healthcare.
Immediately extending care through a Medicare for All like effort would be an effective fix. A non-profit, single standard of high quality healthcare for all. Jenny would be alive today and so would her baby daughter.
A Medicare for all amendment, from Rep. Anthony Weiner, will be voted on in the House this month.
Our government should grant, provide and protect the right to healthcare as if it meant the future of our nation or its failure. Because that is exactly what it does mean.