Why we are Marching to the Finish Line for Melanie
Posted on February 13th, 2010 by Marc Stier
A group of Pennsylvanians are Marching from Philadelphia to Washington, DC between February 17 and 24 in honor of Melanie Shouse. This is why.
Recently, our friend, Melanie Shouse lost a long battle with breast cancer after missing out on critical treatment because she, like thousands of others, could not find affordable health insurance.
Melanie did everything she could to fight for health care, not just for herself, but for all of us. President Obama, who knew Melanie as a volunteer on his campaign, said: “She was fighting that whole time not just to get me elected, not even to get herself health insurance, but because she understood that there were others coming behind her who were going to find themselves in the same situation and she didn’t want somebody else going through that same thing.” It was a long road for Melanie, but she never gave up.
A lot of us are frustrated that, after mobilizing for over a year to reform health care, rein in Wall Street, create good jobs, win workers’ rights, and combat global warming, we are still waiting for the change we voted for. But we’re not giving up either. A group of Pennsylvanians, some with health care issues of their own, decided to march 135 miles from Philadelphia to Washington in honor of Melanie, carrying her message to the Members of Congress who need to hear it the most.
We’ll arrive on February 24th, just before President Obama’s Health Care Summit. So, as the summit begins we’ll be there to tell lawmakers enough is enough! Members of Congress have had plenty of time to discuss and debate health care over the past year. Now it’s their job to make it happen. It’s time to get it done and get it done right. Congress must deliver the change we voted for!
We’d like you to meet us as we march to deliver Melanie’s message to Washington. You can join us for part of the march or for an event along the way. Our route and a list of the events we have already planned can be found here. Check back often as we are adding events.
We’d especially like you to bring us your stories about the need for health care reform, which we will take to the members of Congress we meet. Or even better, you can join hundreds of people for the last mile of the march to the Capitol. (Join us at our staging area Union Station at 12:30 pm. RSVP here).
You can follow our progress us on-line at www.melaniesmarch.com and on Twitter (we’re tweeting from HCANPA and using the hashtag #melaniesmarch). And please show your support for our march by taking action in support of health care reform or making a donation in support of the march itself.
Contact me for more information or if you or your organization want to join the march at MarcStier@hcanpa.org 215.880.6142 with questions or to join the march.
Thanks for your support.
Marc
Marc Stier
PA State Director
Health Care For America NOW!
PS This event is co-sponsored by HCAN, SEIU, Families USA, The AME Church, Catholics United, Health Rights Organizing Project, Interfaith Worker Justice, National Physicians Alliance, Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Philadelphia Unemployment Project, UFCW, Raising Women’s Voices, (List in formation).
Thank you for your courage and efforts for health care reform. Melanie’s March was mentioned yesterday at her memorial service here in St. Louis at Central Reform Congregation. Her parents were very moved, and the attendees applaud your efforts for social justice. I’m sure Melanie is very proud as her divine ears tingle with all the continuing faith in folks knowing they can have a real impact on ending the abject profiteering in an industry that should be based on humane healing first.
Thank you again!
Awesome! People like you are the true heros of this country. Best of luck in your march. I hope to see you along the way!
On April 26, 2010, in the Circuit Court of Ohio County (Wheeling WV) a “darling of wall street,” insurance company giant Coventry Health Care Inc of Bethesda MD will face charges of discrimination and intimidation against someone with a disability. It has been a long painful journey, but I am winning. I am not “violent and dangerous” as corporate believed; in fact I have been symptom free of bipolar issues for the five years I have investigated insurance companies and the regulatory agencies that are mandated to oversee insurance operations but are controlled by the insurance industry. The assoication of Insurance Commissoners is now ruled by a corrupt President, Jane Cline, who has ignored WV state law to support private insurance.
If interested, you may read my blog of the widespread injustice that is part of the every day business practices of insurance companies like Coventry at Tuesdaytiradesandtales.blogspot.com. Note the the day Tuesday is singular.
Finally, my husband I have been to Washington. Senator Jay Rockefeller’s staff knows the degree of injustice done to the poor in our state. No action.
Will pray that others will join you and me in April to vocalize our abhorrance as to what goes on behind closed doors. Happy to report that Coventry’s doors were wide open to me for over a four month period. A former CEO falsely accused me of fruad as Coventry did not like what I uncovered.
So I keep writing comments on sites like yours to broaden your undersantding of the scope of this systemic evil.
Be well.
Christine Stenger
Thank you so much for marching. Melanie truly was a dedicated activist and a beautiful person. She will be missed.
Please make sure that the bill you get passed has a PUBLIC OPTION. Without it, everyone will be forced to pay whatever the “market” demands for health insurance, and health insurers will start right away to increase rates dramatically, so they can increase rates as much as possible before the healthcare “reform” law goes into effect in 2013 and limits their “increases” for people with pre-existing conditions and for those over 55. You must not ignore this point. Passing a bill is not the same thing as achieving affordable healthcare for all. The current bill is badly flawed and could wind up grinding the middle class deeper into the dirt unless a non-profit, public option (eg, Medicare for All) is part of this bill. Allowing a “3rd Party” or “Middleman” to profit from illness is obscene. Our “insurance” model is intrinsically flawed.
I am all choked up even as I write this. I cannot attend the march, but perhaps I can go to the rally tomorrow during my lunch to show my support. I am sorry for Melanie, her family and the untold millions that either don’t have healtcare or inadequate. It is a sin for a great nation such as this to deny it’s citizens basic care. Most of us are one paycheck away from having no health insurance. God bless and be with you all. I stand with you.
[...] ON BEHALF OF THEIR FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES WHO PASSED BECAUSE OF THIS GREEDY SICK SYSTEM. http://www.melaniesmarch.com/?p=19 Reply With Quote + Reply to Thread « Previous Thread | [...]
To those who still have no insurace coverage and have to deal with ongoing health care problems. This site and Melanies struggle is yours also. Join for yourself and Melanie for the future of affordable health care for everyone in America.
IF I could be there………..I surely would…to support Melanie and TRY to make a difference.
Going against these GREEDY, ARROGANT Health insurance companies will not be easy, but WE the American people have got to make our voices heard, and to the right people so that what happened to Melanie NEVER happens to anyone…. ever again!! I believe that something good will come of Melanie’s death and that these evil insurance companies WILL pay in the worst way.
KARMA……………It WILL Get You!
God Bless Melaine, and all of you who are marching for her.
I have been very active and vocal in the battle for true, affordable health are reform since attending a rally in DC last June. Although framing a message has been difficult. The PUBLIC OPTION is a message that we have framed well. Americans need affordable healthcare. People are sick and dying,our elected officials in DC need to get some backbone. It is sad when people in third world countrys have access to affordable healthcare and Americans do not. I am very upset that I will not be able to join in the march to Washington. I just started a job, and am moving into a new residence and am unable to break away. My heart and soul are with you. Good Luck and stay healthy.
I’m surprised I didn’t see it mentioned, but MOVEON.ORG has organized a telephone “march” for healthcare on February 24th – giving Melanies March link as a reference.
Telephone everyone representing YOU in Congress for REAL healthcare reform. Million’s of streaming calls might make an impression that millions of signatures on petitions so far have not.
It’s government’s job to protect it’s citizens. More people die from lack of healthcare or inadequate healthcare than from terrorism.
If they don’t like “government-run” healthcare, then Congress should give up their healthcare. I bet if Congress didn’t have healthcare provided to them – then we would have had real reform a long time ago.
A recent “Investor’s Business Daily”
article provided very interesting
statistics from a survey by the United
Nations International Health
Organization.
Percentage of men and women who
survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with
diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip
replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage referred to a medical
specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%
Number of MRI scanners (a prime
diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71
England 14
Canada 18
Percentage of seniors (65+), with low
income, who say they are in “excellent health”:
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%
I don’t know about you, but I don’t
want “Universal Healthcare” comparable
to England or Canada .
F.Y.I. Medicare and Medicade pay Health Care Providers, that is Doctors and Hospitals , $0.29 for each Dollar billed. That is why Hospitals like Jackson Memorial are running $249,000,000.00 deficits.The costs must then be shifted to Paying Patients which is passed on to Insurance Premiums of those who can afford them. Sooner or later we will all be equally poor. Then those who could have given you a job will be poor also. Vicious Cycle. We are all born equal,what we make of ourselves is up to each of us.
The heights by great men reached and kept, are not attained by sudden flight. But they while their companions slept, were toiling up-wards in the night. Quote from Henry Flaglers Mother
The healthcare system in the US is a scandalous sham.
I was born and raised in Germany, married an American GI and lived in the US for more than 35 years. Although I had private health insurance for th 20 years I was divored, this insurance was so bad and had such a high deductable that I NEVER could afford to go to the doctor or dentist.
Finally at age 66, after I qualified for Medicare in US, I moved back to Germany, managed against all odds to get into their healthcare system, premiums of which are geared towards the income, and for the last three years of living here, have enjoyed medical care and treatment that for me is like a fairy tale as compared to the lack of treatment I experienced under the unaffordable (payments often took up 40% of my income) private insurance system in the US. Is the US the Greatest country in the world, as so many Americans like to proclaim? Sorry, I don’t think so. It’s the ONLY industrialized country in the world without healthcare for everyone.
There is a link to the MoveOn virtual march page in our sidebar and also in the post entitled, Help Melanie’s March Grow.
This post gives me a good opportunity to correct one of the misapprehensions people have about the health care bills going through Congress right now.
1. We are not trying to create a system like England’s or Canada’s. Our goal is not to have hospital’s owned by the government and doctor’s on government salaries as in England or to have a single payer health insurance system as in Canada. Our goal is the kind of hybrid public / private system found in the US today, although one that enable everyone in the country to get good health insurance at affordable rates. We’re not going to do away with private health insurance but, rather regulate it so that people with pre-existing conditions are not denied care or coverage; make it affordable to individuals and small businesses and, we hope, provide more competiiton to hold down insurance costs.
So, even if these statistics are accurate—and I’m not sure I trust the source–your not talking about the kind of health care system we want to create.
By most estimates, Americans have the no better, and often worse health care results than people in other advanced countries. On many measures, such as infant mortality, our rank is very low. That’s most often because many people cannot afford health are.
2. And your last statistic actually contradicts your case. Seniors in the United States are part of a single payer system called Medicare. It is far closer to the Canadian system than what we want to establish. So if seniors are more satisfied with their health here than in England and Canad, I would conlude that the reason has little to do with the financing system and more to do with other aspects of health care, which will not be changed under the legislation we support.
3. I’m very dubious about many of these statistics. For example, look at this piece about why your information about cancer survival rates his highly misleading: http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/cancer-rates-and-unjustified-conclusions/
I attended the rally today in Baltimore, which brought together the marchers, a local doctor, Marylanders who had healthcare horror stories to relate, and author Taylor Branch who eloquently compared the struggle to improve our healthcare system with the long fight for civil rights. I feel more strongly than ever that this cause is just, necessary and urgent. If the truth about our broken system were more widely known and understood, this country would do the right thing and join the rest of the industrialized world in taking care of its citizens, rather than leaving them to the mercy of predatory insurance companies. March on, and may justice, compassion and sanity prevail!
Ralph
The poll article you quote never existed in the Investors Business Daily. Try goolging it. If you find a real link to it let us know. I guarantee you won’t. Quit spreading internet lies.