Galesburgers for Health Care Reform Regular people working to make a reform a reality…

Tue Nov 17, 2009 at 05:46:09 PM PST

A few weeks ago, Count­down Sr. Pro­ducer Richard Stock­well came up with an idea: create a series of free clinics which would not only deliver care to the unin­sured, but would demon­strate the need for health care reform that covers all Americans.

On Sat­urday, Stock­well attended the first of those free clinics, held in New Orleans in part­ner­ship with the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Free Clinics. On Monday, Stock­well described his expe­ri­ence there in a post on MSNBC.com, deliv­ering a pow­erful and moving tes­ta­ment to the imper­a­tive of a health care overhaul.

Keith Olber­mann read the post in its entirety during the first seg­ment of Monday’s Count­down, along with video footage from the free clinic itself.

The idea of focusing frus­tra­tion about the pace of reform — and focusing the anger against the Bart Stupak’s and Mary Landrieu’s of this world — into some­thing positive…

That was the brain­storm of one of our Count­down Senior Pro­ducers, Rich Stockwell.

A brain­storm that raised one mil­lion, 700 thou­sand dol­lars… and so far has gotten free health care to one thou­sand of our neigh­bors, with Free Clinic Number Two, set for this Sat­urday in Little Rock.

Did it put polit­ical pres­sure on any­body? On Sen­ator Landrieu?

As Rich found out when he went to New Orleans to rep­re­sent us, it damn well better put pres­sure on every­body — even those of us who already con­sider our­selves ardently pro-reform.

He wrote a com­pelling first-person essay for the Count­down web­site and with his per­mis­sion I’m going to read it in full… because he’s right.

As I stood in the middle of the 163-thousand square feet of the New Orleans Con­ven­tion Center that had been set up to pro­vide people with health care, my eyes welled up and over­flowed — Rich writes.

It hap­pened as I watched a 50-something woman walk out, after spending sev­eral hours being attended to by vol­un­teer doc­tors. “She’s decided against treat­ment. A rea­son­able deci­sion under the cir­cum­stances” the doctor tells us as she heads for the next patient.

The pres­i­dent of the board of the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Free Health Clinics tells me why: “It’s stage four breast cancer, her body is filled with tumors.” I don’t know when that woman last saw a doctor. But I do know that if she had health insur­ance, the odds she would have seen a doctor long ago are much higher, and her chances for an ear­lier diag­nosis and treat­ment would have been far greater.

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America — Rich continues.

83 per­cent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other gov­ern­ment help on a large scale, not “wel­fare queens” as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good upstanding cit­i­zens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

90 per­cent of the patients who came through Saturday’s clinic had two or more diagnoses.

82-percent had a life-threatening con­di­tion such as car­dio­vas­cular dis­ease, dia­betes, or hyper­ten­sion. They are vic­tims of a system built with cor­po­rate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imper­a­tive that should drive us to show com­pas­sion to our fellow men and women.

Health reform is not about Democ­rats or Repub­li­cans or who can score polit­ical points for the next election …

It’s about people. It’s about fair­ness and jus­tice in a system that knows none.

Rich con­tinues:

I’d defy even the most hard­ened capitalist-loving-conservative to do what I did on Sat­urday and con­tinue to pre­tend that the system in place right now is working.

Count­down chose to high­light and raise money for the Asso­ci­a­tion of Free Clinics because we

knew the work they do is so vitally impor­tant and we wanted to show in real terms how great the need is. We invited sev­eral politi­cians to attend so they could see first hand how crit­ical the sit­u­a­tion is. All declined. Some explained that they talk with con­stituents all the time and know very well of the need for reform.

I have news for them, these people didn’t need to speak. Their actions spoke far louder than any words … having to get a check up and diag­noses at a free clinic because they have no other option tells you all you need to know.

There are no words that can accu­rately describe the quiet des­per­a­tion on the faces of the patients. Every single one I spoke to, and every one I heard talking with doc­tors, expressed their grat­i­tude for the event and wished that they were held more often. They have been given the resources in their local com­mu­ni­ties in which they can get follow up care, but they are also the few. Over 700-thousand people in Louisiana alone **have** no health care, most of them with jobs that don’t offer insurance.

Or, worse, they have to decide whether to pay for that — or food and housing.

Four patients were taken out on stretchers and admitted imme­di­ately to hospitals.

One woman who didn’t know why she was feeling bad had a blood pres­sure of 280 over 180, numb­ness in her right arm, and “a slight headache.” She now has a shot at sur­vival, but without her atten­dance at the clinic, it was a matter of time before the inevitable happened.

Rich con­tinues:

I spoke with a nurse who was there not as a vol­un­teer, but as a patient. He works two part time jobs at hos­pi­tals pro­viding quality care to those who have the one thing he doesn’t.

Many of his patients share his con­di­tion of high blood pres­sure, but they are for­tu­nate to have insur­ance to pay for him to care for them — while he goes without.

His sit­u­a­tion is not uncommon, he has tried for years to get more hours at one of his jobs so he will be eli­gible for ben­e­fits, but it hasn’t hap­pened yet. Our system of for-profit health care can’t afford to give him and others ben­e­fits — might make the stock price drop a penny or two.

The last time the media gath­ered at that con­ven­tion center, it was for a nat­ural dis­aster in which our gov­ern­ment was ren­dered use­less due to incompetence.

This time we were there to cover a man-made dis­aster of even larger pro­por­tions. This is a dis­aster that goes largely unseen by most Amer­i­cans. It is not too late for our cur­rent gov­ern­ment to show that they are com­pe­tent, and can do what the vast majority of Amer­i­cans are asking them to.

The incred­ibly ded­i­cated people at the Asso­ci­a­tion of Free Clinics told me the clinic would change me and I knew it would. None but the most hard­ened and heart­less among us could watch that event and not be moved to action.

Rich con­tinues: I have changed. I am grat­i­fied that just over one thou­sand people were able to get the min­imal amount of care and resources for follow up. But, I am heart-sick for the many more like them who didn’t have the time or didn’t know that they could get care on Sat­urday. They walk through their lives not knowing when the ticking time bomb might go off.

Politi­cians con­tinue to tell us we are the most com­pas­sionate and caring people, and clearly we have done much good in the world.

I left the event over­whelmed by the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of the vol­un­teers, doc­tors, nurses, other med­ical pro­fes­sionals, as well as ordi­nary cit­i­zens who came to help.

Yet — Rich con­cludes — I am left with one over­whelming ques­tion: what does it say about us as a nation of people who can live in a country so rich and yet allow this to continue?