Mar 03 2010
SEIU’s Andy Stern praises Obama’s health care proposal – in the name of Melanie Shouse
President Obama today outlined part of his health care proposal, and it immediately won accolades from a number of progressive leaders.
Here’s what SEIU’s Andy Stern had to say, in part:
For too long, insurance companies have called the shots – standing between people and their doctors. Refusing coverage because you were once sick. Denying you needed treatments because they say so. Dropping your insurance because you got too sick.
The President made clear today, no more. Insurance companies cannot and must not be the ones to determine our country’s future.
That is exactly why it is time to move forward with the President’s proposal. Because in this great country of ours, we cannot stand idly by and allow any more Melanies to suffer. Melanie Shouse, a 41-year old health reform activist, died after a long, painful battle with her health insurance company over coverage for the chemotherapy she desperately needed.
Taking on the insurance companies is why we’re planning a large demonstration next Tuesday. We’ve got buses bringing people in from more than a dozen states – we’ll have more information on this shortly.
So this is really a good news, but hope it will really works and brings people to a better future.
When I last posted on health care reform, I likened being a health activist this past January to riding a roller coaster, with lots of ups, downs, bends, and vertigo-inducing twists, all very akin to the sensations I was experiencing. But there’s another key feature of a roller coaster, one that I hope is not similar to the reform process: it always brings you back to the same point. Over the last month, I’ve often had the feeling that our chances of reform were getting so slim that we would end our roller coaster ride in the same place we started when President Obama took office a year and more ago—although, of course, we would really be taking multiple steps backward, each one measured by one more bankruptcy or death among the ranks of the uninsured.
But now, suddenly, as this week begins to unfold, I feel a bit more hopeful. Many years ago for ccna test, I remember there was a television program called, That Was The Week That Was; this week, February 22-26, seems to be shaping up as This is The Week That Is (Decisive). After what seems like forever, we do seem to be seeing movement. The trigger is the actions of the President.
Yesterday the White House posted its own attempt to reconcile the separate health care reform bills that were passed by the House and Senate in 2009. As I write this, the detailed analyses of this synthesized bill are just starting to emerge, with, in so many instances, all the spin attached to everything in Washington.
I’m a little confuesed because I’ve been told that hospitals can’t deny you treatment like in the ER? Also, what about the people that say that the government will regulate the health care, and may deny people coverage? it that true?