To listen to our next program on February 16, click on the picture at left which will take you to WCAN’s web site. Once there, click the icon captioned “Click Here to Listen.” (The web site offers help should you encounter any problems.)  Deb's guest will be Dave Steil, businessman and President of Health Care 4 All PA, speaking on the effects of the current health care system on business, what single-payer could do for business, and how to convince your legislator. During the show you can call 1-800-921-2204 with your questions or comments or email them to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Posted 1/23/12 

The journey I embarked on when I made the decision to leave a successful career in the health insurance business was a spiritual one. I can trace the decision to a true epiphany, to the very moment I saw hundreds of people standing, soaking wet, in long, slow-moving lines, waiting to get medical care that was being provided in animal stalls at a fairground in Wise County, Virginia.

It hit me immediately that had my circumstances been a little different when I was growing up near there, I could have been one of those people. It also hit me that the work I was doing as a spokesman for the insurance industry was making it necessary, at least in part, for those people to resort to such humiliation to get basic medical care. One of my responsibilities was to persuade Americans of the lie that most of the uninsured are that way by choice, that they have shirked their responsibility to themselves and their families. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Our so-called health care "system" had simply left them behind.

I cannot tell you why I felt compelled to drive from my parents home in Kingsport, Tennessee to Wise County -- a distance of about 50 miles -- on that late July day in 2007. What I can tell you is that stretch of U.S. Highway 23 turned out to be my Road to Damascus. For the past few years, I have been dedicated to spreading the truth about how health insurance companies really operate in this country.

Last year my new career attracted the notice of Matthew Heineman, a documentary filmmaker in New York. He and his team interviewed me for a movie, Escape Fire, that premiered Friday at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival here in Park City. I have not seen anything that better captures just how dysfunctional our system really is and how urgent it is for us to transform it.

I was invited to the premier and to be part of a town hall-type discussion with others who were interviewed for the film, including famed cardiologist Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Don Berwick, who served until recently as head of the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

As fate would have it, I am staying in a hotel with a magnificent view of one of Park City's most famous ski slopes. Had I been here just a few days earlier, I very possibly might have witnessed a tragedy that sent shock waves through the sports world.

While training on that halfpipe slope, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke suffered a torn vertebral artery in her neck that caused bleeding in her brain, an injury that she would die from last Thursday, the day my family and I checked into the hotel. Just 29, Burke was considered a top-flight "acrobat-on-skis," and a medal contender at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.

Instead, her family will be laying her to rest in her native Canada -- and pleading for money to help cover the estimated $550,000 they owe for the medical care she received at University of Utah Hospital over nine days.

The irony is that had the accident occurred in Canada, her family would not be having to come up with more than half a million dollars to pay for her care. Her care would have been covered because, unlike the U.S., Canada has a system of universal coverage.

An estimated 700,000 American families file for bankruptcy every year because of medical debt. No one in Canada finds themselves in that predicament, nor do they face losing their homes as many Americans do when they become critically ill or suffer an injury.

One of the things my colleagues in the insurance industry tried to get Americans to believe was that Canadians flock to the U.S. to get medical care they cannot get in their own country. That is a myth. Yes, some Canadians come to the U.S. for treatment, but not in large numbers. In fact, polls in Canada consistently show high levels of satisfaction among citizens with their country's single-payer system.

I probably would not have known about a fundraising effort that has been started by Burke's friends had my wife not come across a tweet about it Friday morning. I haven't been able to find anything about it so far in any media here in Utah. There was a report about her accident on the morning news, but no mention of the fundraiser.

I did find information about it in the Toronto Star, which quoted family members as saying they were "moved by the sincere and heartfelt sympathy" expressed by supporters worldwide. It is clear the family needs help. Not only are they grieving, they are facing financial ruin, simply because Sarah Burke's accident was in the United States of America.

I'm certain I would not have known anything about this had I not been interviewed for Escape Fire last year, or invited to come to Park City and stay at a hotel with a window overlooking the last slope Sarah Burke would ever ski. My spiritual journey continues.

by Roger Bybee

With a raft of new Charles Dickens biographies hitting bookstores this fall, it is difficult not to quote the classic chronicler of the Victorian era's polarities when describing the state of America's healthcare system: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

The good times are concentrated among corporate executives. Healthcare, insurance and drug company CEOs have actually managed to displace bankers as the best-rewarded bosses in America. The Guardian archly reported recenty: "Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay."

Among the big winners in healthcare listed by the UK-based newspaper:

• John Hammergren, chief executive of McKesson Corporation, a pharmaceutical distribution corporation, took home a breathtaking $145,266,971 in 2010.
• Joel Gemunder, outgoing president of Omnicare, a pharmacy company that dispenses drugs in nursing homes, benefited handsomely from s 2010 total pay package worth $98,283,242.
• “CVS Caremark, which operates 7,000 pharmacies across the US, awarded chief executive Thomas Ryan $68,079,823 in 2010.
• Ronald Williams, boss of health insurance giant Aetna, made $57,787,786 in 2010.

But for America’s healthcare consumers, the bad times got worse. Despite the slow-moving implementation of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the system’s vital signs indicated critical condition:

• 53 million Americans are now uninsured, up from 34 million in 1990.
• As many as 82,000 Americans die annually due to a lack of access to healthcare, according to a new Commonwealth Fund study that roughly doubles the previous estimate.
• 62% of personal bankruptcies are accounted for by an unaffordable stack of medical bills brought on by a family members’ health crisis.

Sweeping cuts in Medicaid by U.S. governors threaten to throw more people, including children, into icy uninsured waters. For example, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is aiming to slice Medicaid rolls by 65,000, including 30,000 children.

Healthcare insurance has become so expensive that Americans have cut back on their visits to doctor’s offices by 17 percent, even as a growing share of Americans admit that they have skipped needed medical care because high-cost, high-deductible plans continue to proliferate.

But even with the implementation of state-level healthcare exchanges under the PPACA (aka, “Obamacare”), don’t expect much improvement except in curbing the most egregious abuses of insurers, warns Dr. Don McCanne, senior health policy fellow of the Physicians for a National Healthcare Programs.

Once the exchanges are in place in 2014, moderate-income Americans are certain to find themselves ensnarled in fights with the IRS over the proper level of subsidies they need to pay for a level of healthcare insurance that many doctors consider “skimpy."

Until the point where the inadequacy of PPACAA’s coverage becomes clear and Americans grow infuriated over fighting to pay for inadequate coverage., we seem destined for several more years of "unaffordable under-insurance," as McCanne told In These Times earlier this month. When frustration over the new status quo boils over, Americans will be ready to have a serious debate about the single-payer "Medicare for all” plan that replaces for-profit insurers.

Street Speech, The Voice from the Streets of Columbus, Dec 2-15, 2011
The New Homeless, by Eileen Hiltbrand, Street Speech vendor

Before I became homeless my vision of the homeless was that of a scraggly man with a bottle of cheap booze wrapped in a paper bag, begging for spare change and sleeping under a bridge. Oh how experiences can change one's perspective.

I am homeless. I have a college degree in business and in which I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Ohio State University. I also have a Doctorate in which I graduated Cum Laude. You wouldn't picture me as "one of those homeless people." Yet I am.

There are many of me out here. We sell these papers to keep a roof over our heads, provide the basics that we all need on a daily basis, or to pay our medical needs and co-pays. That's not to say that some of us aren't those "scraggly men" who live under a bridge. Please don't assume, however, that the image of the "scraggly man" represents the whole of us.

Each of us are unique and different as to what brought us into homelessness. In my case, I developed heart problems/failures in March of 2005. Six weeks later, I woke up from a coma owing $1.2 million for healthcare. Thereafter, I lost my house and subsequently a condo that I rented. Although I had health insurance my entire life, United Health Care denied my claims and I was too sick, and they were too big for me to fight. Ergo, I found myself homeless.

I won't go into details about the basements, carports, etc. into which I crawled to find a warm place to sleep. Needless to say, those of us who are homeless are not all derelicts, drunks, or crack-heads.

Let me just say thank-you for purchasing our papers when you see us standing out on these street corners. I can only speak for myself but it means the world and my life to me. Thank you.

About Street Speech

Street Speech is a monthly social justice newspaper, published by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless since March 2008. Street Speech serves as a voice for the most vulnerable in our community by publishing articles and creative writing by currently and formerly homeless individuals and by educating the community about the issues facing homeless persons in Columbus

The Healthcare Movie, a documentary film narrated by Keifer Sutherland, will be shown across the state wherever we can gather a group. The film deals with the ways in which the U.S. and Canadian healthcare systems diverged over the past half century and how cultural perceptions can be changed to improve the provision of care. So organize a potluck at a space in your community where the film can be played from DVD and projected with an adequate audio system. The film runs about one hour and discussion will follow. In addition, there will be an opportunity to participate in the Healthcare Human Rights Collaboration picture petition and obtain copies of the official Healthcare for All Ohioans Act petitions for circulation. To preview a trailer for the movie go to: http://www.healthcaremovie.net/. Contact SPAN State Director Kurt Bateman to schedule your screening today!  Phone 614-562-1066 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Single Payer Action Network Ohio is opposed to amending the Ohio constitution as stipulated in ballot issue 3 slated for the November ballot.

First there are serious fundamental legal contradictions within issue 3 that call into question the validity of states to attempt nullification of federal statutes in this way. Second, the idea that Ohio would amend its constitution to preclude the citizens of this state from enacting legislation through democratically elected representatives is antithetical to the freedoms we value as a self governing society. In addition, state laws already enacted with respect to health care access whether through workers compensation or state administered federal safety net programs, could be harmed dramatically by this vaguely written and poorly informed restrictive covenant.

Lastly, in spite of the passage of federal legislation to regulate and expand health insurance access, much more action is needed to secure the access to necessary care that enables the exercise of individual freedom. Tying the hands of state representatives with an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that says in effect “the state may not act” is inherently undemocratic and restricts the democratic freedoms of Ohio citizens.

Vote NO on Ohio Ballot Issue #3

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