Chelsea forum calls for universal healthcare

Ajamu Sankofa, national organizer of the advocacy group Healthcare Now, speaks to participants at the Universal Health Care Forum at the Hudson Guild Elliott Center last Monday night.

By Larry Littman

Irma Ozer stood at a universal healthcare forum in Chelsea last Monday night, and in a quivering voice told the panel of speakers at the head of the room that she recently learned she had multiple sclerosis. She also learned that she was being excluded from long-term health coverage because of it.

“I should not have to spend down to poverty,” she said in a stern voice. “I’m a lawyer, and I feel that there should be a lawsuit against those organizations [denying us coverage]. I don’t think it is fair.”

Ozer’s angry comments lent further drama to an already emotional program in which speakers and members of the audience showed and explained how the current healthcare system has failed the public.

“What you are going through is unacceptable,” answered Ajamu Sankofa, national organizer of Healthcare Now and one of the speakers on the program. “It is an outstanding example of what this crisis in healthcare is all about.”

Ozer and Sankofa were two of the nearly 100 people who attended the Universal Health Care Forum at the Hudson Guild Elliott Center to air their dissatisfaction with the present system and to listen to healthcare specialists. The forum was organized by the New York Network of the Gray Panthers and co-sponsored by more than 20 groups, including the Chelsea-based Chelsea for Peace, Penn South Social Action Committee, the Hudson Guild and the Metro New York Raging Grannies, who managed to bring levity, along with poignancy, to the otherwise serious evening.

The Metro New York Raging Grannies belt out a tune satirizing the current healthcare crisis at last week’s forum on universal healthcare.

The forum was one of many being held around the country by nationally recognized advocacy groups to discuss the crisis in healthcare and amass support for reforms as the 2008 presidential campaign begins to heat up. With the United States being the only industrialized democracy that does not guarantee healthcare for all, and with rising costs of and declining coverage provided by most health insurance, universal healthcare is expected to be one of the hottest issues in the campaign.

Sankofa has long been dedicated to the struggle for universal healthcare, and his urgency and exasperation with the current system were on full display Monday night. “There is nothing that people in a situation like this can do but become impoverished or die,” he said of Ozer’s predicament. “I mean, that is the reality of it. And we should all be fighting mad to make sure that we don’t get caught up year after year in this and not have any solutions.”

The evening’s other speakers, introduced by Judy Lear, head of the Gray Panthers’ New York chapter and chairperson of the forum, included Mark Hannay, director of the Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign, Denise Soffel, senior policy analyst for Community Services Society, and coordinator for Medicaid Matters, and Roger Sanjek of the Gray Panthers. Sanjek covered the Gray Panthers’ involvement with healthcare through its history and stated that the organization is still committed to its original vision of healthcare. “We must press for national community-based health service that will free healthcare delivery from the dollar sign,” he said.

While all of the speakers voiced support for a single-payer universal healthcare system, Sankofa made the strongest appeal for public support of the United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676), introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan). According to Healthcare-Now, the bill would create a publicly financed, privately delivered healthcare system that expands and improves upon the already existing Medicare program.

The Act calls for coverage of all medically necessary services, including primary care, inpatient and outpatient care, emergency care, prescription drugs, long-term care, mental health services, dentistry, eye care, and chiropractic and substance abuse treatment. It would extend coverage to every person living in or visiting the United States and U.S. Territories. Patients would have their choice of physicians, providers, hospitals, clinics and practices, and co-payments and deductibles would not be permissible.

“And it would be cheaper than the current system,” Sankofa added. “One-third of the dollars we pay in deductibles and co-payments is paid to keep a crew of people around to decide that you don’t get coverage. It is there for advertising and for paying CEOs.”

Forum speakers then urged members of the audience to call their congressmembers to help get hearings for the legislation

In addition, Hannay pointed out that, while stronger steps are being taken now to position the United States for successful insurance reform, the debate has been raging for nearly a century. The concept was first mentioned by Teddy Roosevelt while running for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1912, he said, and individuals and groups called for it throughout the 1900s. Although myriad presidents took up the mantle, Hannay noted that in 1993, President Bill Clinton “put a complicated and complex program on the table, which nobody could explain to anybody, and for a variety of reasons it crashed and burned the next year.”

Calls for universal healthcare have been renewed of late by major corporations such as Wal-Mart, Qwest Communications and General Mills, labor groups, small businesses, ACT-UP and myriad groups such as the ones present on Monday night. Filmmaker Michael Moore is also weighing in with his latest film, “Sicko,” which targets HMO’s and the drug companies while portraying the current state of the healthcare system in America. The film premiered at the Cannes film festival this month and is expected to open in New York City in June.

With the bourgeoning movement for single-payer universal healthcare, Sankofa believes it may be politically feasible to achieve it within three years, despite strong opposition from the drug and insurance industries. He pointed out that small-business bankruptcies that have resulted from the current system are now being tracked to show the urgency of the crisis; he also likened the struggle to the civil rights movement, going so far as to say that, without real progress by 2009, activists and advocates may turn to civil disobedience.

But it was the Raging Grannies who brought down the house at the Elliot Center on Monday night, setting the stage for the evening’s discussion with a series of songs offering lyrics to tunes satirizing the current crisis. One number, set to the music of Oh Tanenbaum, aptly summed up the problem:

“Oh Medicare, my Medicare, with all those plans are you still there?

Can I stay indestructible with such a high deductible?

So Congress please go very slow.

Don’t make me join an HMO.

You’ve given me an awful scare.

Don’t privatize my Medicare.”