By Donna Smith
Community organizer, California Nurses Association/NNOC
CHICAGO -- Last week when I was getting ready to drive to Denver for the DNC convention and related activities, I got a couple of messages that are still weighing on my heart and mind today. And despite all the grand displays of our greater aspirations, I am at a loss for real answers for two of the bravest women I know.
Julie Pierce wrote to me and shared her frustration in feeling that her family's story has already been forgotten.
"It is a shame that the rest of us in 'SiCKO' don't get to share our stories during a time that is so crucial to our country's future," Julie said.
I suspect others among those featured in the film feel the same way. Julie's husband Tracy died while still in his 30s from kidney cancer after being denied the bone marrow transplant that might have saved him. And because Julie will raise her son alone and will never be able to forget the death sentence the for-profit healthcare system imposed on her husband, she has a hard time understanding that the rest of the world moves on to the next tragedy, the next photo op, the next compelling video, the next dead patient...
So many Americans are dying and being harmed by the for-profit health insurance industry that stories could be gathered on hundreds of websites and at multiple venues and still not put a dent in the problem.
In fact, even those who advocate for expansion of the corrupt system gather patient stories and then use them like tabloid cover pieces to say reform is needed. They tell us that for-profit insurance companies are harming us and then lobby for expanded coverage for more people. That just doesn't add up.
Just like AARP does as it tells seniors it's looking out for their best interests while raking in huge amounts of money from for-profit healthcare insurance companies peddling Medicare Advantage plans and supplementals, some reform groups (with wide coalitions) want dying patients and crying families out front as they expand the profit making opportunities for corporate America.
Sadly, Julie and Tracy Pierce's story is but one of thousands -- in fact, if we just start the clock ticking on the day we invaded Iraq this time, we've lost more than 120,000 Americans right here at home to the lack of access to the healthcare they needed to prevent their deaths.
I got another message too. This one was from Hilda Sarkisyan. You may remember -- Hilda's daughter Nataline was just 17 years old when she died last December after being denied a liver transplant.
"What are you up to? Is everything OK? I am sure my daughter is watching and will continue to give me the energy to continue my fight," wrote Hilda when she worried that a few days of silence meant I had forgotten her too.
Hilda was to appear on Oprah's show last winter. Hilda was to tell her story and demand change in this rotten system -- the flights were booked and plans made. But then Barack Obama won in Iowa, and Oprah was loathe to say anything that would commit Obama to any particular healthcare reform or even lean him in any direction that might cost votes, so the Sarkisyan segment was cancelled. No warning. No honest explanation.
Cord-wood. Nataline. Tracy.
Like cord-word, we're stacking 'em up. Dead bodies. Tragedy and death du jour. And the more stories we tell and then file away, the easier it is to desensitize ourselves to the last story and the story before that. Each one needs to be a bit more horrific than the last to grab our collective attention. Younger cancer patients. Beautiful children. All dead. No headstones like at Arlington National, no heroes' farewell, but Americans one and all.
When I read stories about children and their suffering in families where either they are sick or a parent is struggling with illness and to afford healthcare premiums and benefits, I have such a hard time understanding how the family values folks claim this to be just.
There is no justice or sanity in leaving an immoral healthcare system in place when a moral one is so available. And no matter what I hear, the god I learned about wouldn't let the sick suffer and die to allow the moneychangers more power. It's not pro-life, but it is pro-wealth, pro-rich people, pro-"I'm better than you", pro-elitest, pro-corporate welfare, pro-cruelty and on and on.
On days when I read on the guaranteedhealthcare.org site about another patient dropped from private, for-profit coverage or fighting to get care or waiting months for appointments -- I see Tracy and Nataline's faces. Etched in my memory. Dying. I hear Julie and Hilda cry out to be remembered. A wife and a mother just begging us to remember their loved ones had value just as our loved ones do.
And every day, I add stories to the PR loop that will become today's tragedies to highlight and tomorrow's weeping loved ones to forget -- and the faces keep haunting me. We must make this system just and responsible and decent, like most of the Americans I know would like to see. Single payer, publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare for all.
We don't know if Tracy or Nataline would have been with us today or if their diseases would have claimed them under a reformed system -- but we do know doctors would have made the choices about their treatments rather than the insurance company employees. The doctors need to work for the patients not for the profit-takers. They need to work for the common good. Every day.
And it doesn't fix the problem or bring back Tracy or Nataline, but every day when a patient or family member writes in to the California Nurses Association website, I read that story. And I do not forget. And the system will change because these stories cannot be untold. The lives lost mattered.
To let Julie know she's not forgotten, visit her blogsite.
Tell your healthcare story -- it does matter.
I am also one of four co-chairs of the Progressive Democrats of America (pdamerica.org) Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign and the founder of American Patients United (http://americanpatientsunited.org/).