Some pundits wonder why Americans (read their viewing audience) have not been treated to demonstrations and marches in the streets for meaningful health care reform. Setting aside the fact that mainstream media would like nothing more than an August advertising war between private health insurance and big pharma interests vs. everybody else, local citizen activists are organizing in their communities and taking to the streets.
Your diarist attended one such event in Wilmington, North Carolina yesterday and is dutifully filing this report:
Kay Zwan of Wilmington, North Carolina takes the process of enacting meaningful health care reform personally.
"Our health is at the core of our wealth,both individually and collectively," Kay astutely observes.
And at her core is her inability to help to protect her family within the current health care system. After eighteen years of "doing everything right" holding down a job that included health care benefits, her son has a terminal disease and her husband is a stage four kidney cancer survivor. With these medical liabilities and the downturn in the economy, she lost her job and with it, her family's private health insurance.
She is one of the millions of our neighbors that are "uninsurable." As she sees it, private insurance companies in this country decide who will live and who will die. Disease and disabilities don't discriminate, but private health insurance companies do.
When Kay speaks about how health insurance is a privilege for the young, healthy, and wealthy but denied to the sick, disabled and poor, you can't help but be touched by her passion. Her passion stems from her personal experience and is featured on this 2 1/2 minute You Tube video. Activist Lynice Williams is also featured with a spontaneous outpouring of her heart:
There can be no better tribute to Lynice or to Kay than for our elected leaders to "do the right thing" in crafting health care legislation that includes a public option available and administered nationwide on day one; And for the rest of us to make our voices heard. Having Representative McIntyre and Senator Hagan (two democrats) representing her in Wilmington makes her story even more poignant and urgent. Yesterday, she carried her hopes and aspirations with more than a hundred like minded supporters into the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina.
Thank you Kay and Lynice. May God bless you both.
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