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Critical
State
Local
Groups Sound Alarm on Poor State of Healthcare While
‘Elites’ Stick Up for Roosevelt Bradley
"We
have a disastrous situation on our hands here.”
By
Rebecca Wakefield
Maybe
I’m psychic. That, or my sarcasm is in full karmic mode.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about the crisis in
health insurance, and joked about being scared that an
emergency could land me at Jackson Memorial Hospital,
“akin to attempting to get through the DMV, the post
office on tax day and the black hole of Calcutta at the
same time.”
Then it
happened. I experienced a medical emergency that
required me to take a spin through that very same
institution. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, but still
not fun. The place is overworked, understaffed and you
never know whether the lady calling you Mami and
sticking a needle in your arm is one of the nice ones or
the kind of person who resents your very existence. I
found myself wondering if a prison type of economy might
exist here. Could one trade contraband for special
favors, such as fewer forms to fill out, or more than 30
seconds with any health professional on that conveyor
belt of care?
At the
same time, I was grateful to have the option of whining
about such inconveniences. Could be worse. Could be
better, too, according to the good folks of
Healthcare-NOW-Florida, a local group of activists and
healthcare and insurance industry people who believe
that the time is, well, NOW to significantly alter the
way we pay for and deliver care.
The
group includes Florida
Community Health Action Information Network and
Human Services Coalition of Dade County, among others.
Businessman Michael A. Mundy is one of the co-founders,
along with the HSC’s Daniella Levine and the local Dalai
Lama of insurance brokers, Santiago Leon.
The
group is attempting to build a broad coalition of
individuals, from the community level on up, who are
educated about the options and willing to fight for
better ways of getting it done. A basic reason we are in
the mess we are in now is that most of the major health
policy and funding decisions are controlled by
industries whose vested financial interests are often
not harmonious with customer service.
As
Mundy expressed to me, the healthcare reforms we’ve seen
to date have largely been like sticking Band-Aids on
gaping wounds. Something comprehensive and sustainable
is clearly necessary. “We have a disastrous situation on
our hands here,” he said.
The
numbers of the uninsured are daunting — 600,000 people
in Miami-Dade County, three million across Florida, 47
million nationally. And then there are tens of millions
more underinsured individuals across the United States.
Fifteen
years ago Hillary Clinton was laughed out of Congress
for suggesting we ought to do something about national
healthcare. But national polls now indicate a huge
majority of Americans consider healthcare to be the top
domestic issue facing this country.
Other
indications that the whole “but reform will diminish
private enterprise” argument has jumped the shark is
that mockumentarian Michael Moore is making a movie
about it. It is a film called Sicko that will
make fun of America’s bad health system. With his
stick-a-finger-in-your-eye sensibility, no doubt one of
the countries Moore holds up as an example will be Cuba.
Even
our politicians are starting to get with the talking
points. Sen. Mel Martinez recently filed a bill to
impose a two-year moratorium on cuts to hospitals by
Medicare/Medicaid, which was a big threat ($932 million
a year) to Florida hospitals from President Bush’s
proposed budget cuts. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
filed a similar bill.
But
these are just more moves in the never-ending healthcare
chess match. Healthcare-NOW-Florida is launching this
Saturday (March 24) a series of local Town Hall meetings
aimed at starting a larger movement that could
eventually become national. The meeting is from 10 a.m.
to 1 p.m., at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of
Miami, 7701 SW 76th Ave.
“The
community meetings are really to get the people to start
thinking about how do we frame the central issues,”
Mundy said. “We are short on genuine solutions that are
sustainable … but if we can get the game removed from
tribalistic politics — us against them — we have a
chance.”
Before
I sign off here, a word about our strong mayor, Carlos
Alvarez. The guy was not playing when he said he’d
remove county department heads if they didn’t perform to
his expectations. He took out Planning and Zoning chief
Diane O'Quinn Williams, Employee Relations Director
Donald Allen and Transit Director Roosevelt
Bradley in one swing of the axe.
The
first two went quietly, but Bradley has become a symbol
of endless ethnic turf battles and a tool of political
interests concerned about the trend of Alvarez
dismantling a system of political patronage it took
decades to build. In this case, it’s been turned into a
black thing. But I’d wager loud protest will be heard if
and when Alvarez moves to take out a popular Hispanic
bureaucrat.
I don’t
know anything about Bradley, other than what’s been in
the newspaper. I don’t have an opinion at this point on
whether Alvarez made the right decision. But, as someone
pointed out to me, this latest conflagration exposes an
interesting point about local black politics. The people
jumping to Bradley’s defense have so far tended to be
the social and economic elite of black Miami. They
aren’t necessarily the people riding the buses.
And
some of the protesters are also the ones who stood by
while the county’s housing agency became a fetid
cesspool benefiting a handful of contractors, connected
employees, and the politicians and community leaders who
kept turning a blind eye while people from a different
social class (but from the same bottomless well of
rhetorical angst) were not served by their government.
Where
were the sit-ins from local notables when it was
revealed thousands of poor people weren't being housed
while a handful of contractors got rich? Now that’s an
injustice worth bruising your keister for.
Comments? E-mail
wakefield@miamisunpost.com.
www.Category305.com
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