[CenterfortheWorkingPoor] The Burning Bush Community, in the tradition of the Catholic Worker: Healthcare stories

[Paul Engler]

The Burning Bush Community (aka the Center for the Working Poor), a interfaith community in the tradition of the Catholic Worker : 


The Story Which Needs To Be Told.
 
         I
apologize for thelong wait for an update
about myself and the Center for the Working Poor, the Burning Bush community.
We have been very busy. This year we are serving more families than ever due to
the economy, which hotel companies have used as an excuse to fire injured
workers and union activists. Our outreach to families has been greatly expanded
by my coworker Sam Pullen, who joined the Center full time last year and has
amazing Spanish language and mariachi skills. In addition to our services, we
are always coming up with big plans to transform the world, or sometimes they
come to us -- I am not sure which.  We are beginning to get more calls from social justice and environmental
groups because of our growing reputation for planning big protests, hunger
strikes, and mass nonviolent civil disobedience for social justice causes. So I
am proud to announce we have a plan for thousands to protest and get arrested
in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to win health carereform and global
climate justice in a city near you!
 
         If
you want to see what we are doing without reading my long email of Paul Engler
adventures you
can go to these two websites to find out more about the actions we're working
on: http://www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org and http://www.beyondtalk.net.
 
...................................................................................................
 
         All
this scheming, planning, organizing, and serving the poor doesn’t mean we have
any more money.  We still struggle
to raise enough to provide room and board for our 3 full time workers who are
paid 200 a month. So your support would be an immense help, and you can donate
at: 
 
 https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2975
 
For
all of you who are our sustainers and give on average 20 dollars a month, we
would not be able to do it without you — you are by far our biggest source of
support. Thank
you so much. 
 
 
Let's Tell Our Story of Health Care:
 
The health
carestories that have dominated the press over the summer have been of angry
protesters at town hall meetings. These protesters are driven by unrealistic
fears of a "government
takeover," not
by what is actually happening. "Government death panelsare going to pull the
plug on grandma, and socialized medicineis going to make you die waitingin the emergency room
for care." Many do not realize that millions of dollars from insurance
companies have gone into mobilizing these very scared people. Numerous cleverly
funded groups have literally done polling to find what people are most scaredof and then they
mobilizedthem to protest against any reform. You can see their names conservative for Patient
Rights, Freedom Works, and American for Prosperity on all the protest signs,
and all the busses that carry them. 
         The
complaints about Medicare - the biggest existing government-run health care program - denying care are
almost nonexistent in comparison.Strangely, many among the angry town hall
protesters shout or carry signs that say “keep your government hands off of my
Medicare.” These people apparently don’t realize that Medicare isa government
program, a very popular one at that.In fact, a new poll actually
says that 39 percent of the public do not know Medicare is a government
program. And, in contrast to wild fears about government "death
panels," complaints about denial of care concerning Medicare - an actual
existing government-run health care program - are almost nonexistent.
 
         But
the thing that saddens me is that the real stories are not leading the debate. The real death
panels are the insurance companies that already deny care to sick people
everyday. Most
families have a story to tell about the horrors of private health insurance. 22
percent of medical claims to California's biggestinsurance companies are denied. The chances are that an insurance company has
denied you care sometime in your past. For example, my fellow volunteer at the
Center, Sam Pullen, is like millions in America whohavea family member who was
denied treatment by insurance companies. Even though he grew up as the child of
an affluent doctor, whose family was covered by expensive health insurance, his
mother who was dying of cancer had to fight her insurance company for coverage
of her essential care throughout her final years. 
         I
have a story of my own which
is one of the legendsof my family. When I was12, I had a
freak accident at a party over at a friends house. A toy ice cream cone that we
were throwing around hit my eye at just the right angle creating what in
medical terms is called hyphema—a painful injury in
which the eye socket fills with blood and creates tremendous pressure on the
eye ball, obscuring vision for days with a threat of permanent loss of sight.
There was such an intense pain in my eye that I crawled to the bathroom to peer
in the mirror. When I saw my eye socket filled with blood, I screamed in shock. 
         My
brothers and some friends rushed me over to the hospital, because we were all scared I
might lose my eyesight from the looks of it. There was afew minutes of rushed
information exchanged with the hospital administrators about my mom's insurance
and my condition, then an examination from a nurse, who cringed at the
condition of my eye. The eye might be lost they declared, but I was not
eligible for treatment because it was not considered an emergency and my mom
was not there. That night my single mom was at a funeral in rural Wisconsin,
and we could not get a hold of her over the phone. My brother was 17,and although he was my
caretaker at the moment, he was not my legal guardian. For fear of a variety of
problems related to our American private health insurance system, the hospital
said that I was not to be treated. 
         My
condition seemed to be getting worse, and the horror that I was likely to loose
my eye set in. I had a panic attack and curled up ina ball, hyperventilating
on the hospital floor. My brother and ahandful of his gang of high school friends
started a spontaneous and unplanned form of protest in which they all engaged
in a yelling match with the hospital administrators behind the desk. The whole
emergency room was lit up with screaming, arguing, and confrontation as I was
crying and hyperventilating for what seemed like ages on the cold tile
floor.  
         After
a half an hour or so, to placate all the commotion, they put us in a private
waiting room for an hour until a doctor examined me. The doctor immediately
pronounced my condition an emergency. Indeed, I needed treatment to save my
eye, and he apologized profusely for the conduct of the hospital
administrators. So that my eye could be stabilized, I had to lay in a hospital bed with my
head still and blinded with bandages on both eyes for a week. That night my
brother Francis slept in a chair by my hospital bed as I passed out in
exhaustion from the aftermath of such trauma. 
         My
story is a uniquely American story because in any other industrialized
democracyit would neverhave happened. I would
have gotten treatment immediately. Hospital administrators would not have been
scared about the insurance companies not paying, or have been overloaded by
this system that leaves millions without insurance in the emergency room.
         So
it was very emotional for me when,after leaving my job to give my life to
service at the Center,my older brother scolded me for not having health insurance. This was one of my
biggest fears of living a simple life in solidarity with the poor. Myself and
the other full time volunteers at the Center are like over 50 million people who are
poor, unemployed, or have
"preexisting conditions" in America — wecannot gethealth insurance. I now
can speak with experience about the conditions for the uninsured. 
         I have used the
free clinic system in Los Angeles since forming the Center, and it has been
remarkably good to me in my yearly or so visits to the doctor. But my visit to the
emergency room at the Los Angeles county hospital is a whole different story.
The reason people go to the emergency room is that they need care immediately —
but few but the ones with gaping wounds are treated. Most of the others are
left to wait in lines in pain for so long that the emergency rooms seem likemiserable refugee camps
on the edges of a war zone. Hundreds wait in pain, sick and feverish, in the
cramped halls of the hospital. There are many lines, with no one to direct you
from line to line. Many get lost in the system—lines to get a card, lines to
get a number, lines to check your status, lines to see a doctor, lines for the
bathroom, lines for information, and a line for security.  
         This
confused and huddled mass of patients is one of the most incredible scenes of
pain and suffering I have ever experienced in theUS. Andit is there everyday,
anytime, for anyone to witness. People are huddled together in groups that
naturally form when you are forced into such inhospitable conditions for hours. There is
a unique atmosphere there, like in the midst of a natural disaster, when the usual normsof human conduct no
longer apply, and people revert to basic survival instincts as they wait for
literally 12- 24 hours without leaving one room with hundreds of people in
it.  People form a sense of
community from the common suffering, and there many acts of random kindness to
each other. There are also dozens of desperate people who erupt in bursts of
anger, yelling, and complaining as they struggle for survival and care. As I
waited, I kept on asking, "How long is this wait time?" No one but my
fellow patients seemed to care enough to answer. "This line or the next or
all together? I have been waiting for 12 hours."  Yet this is nothing. Once when I was staying at the Catholic
worker in Houston (which has
the longest emergency room waits in the country), I met a severely famished and
sickly AIDS patient
who hadcamped out for two days in the emergency room before being seen by a doctor.
 
It
makes me so mad.
 
         At
the Center a few weeks ago, we helped lead a local protest for health care reform that was part of a Moveon.org day of actions in almost every city in America.Over 300 people
gathered outside of our senator’s office, sharing "health care horror
stories" of abuse at the hands of private insurance companies, and singing
movement songs to maintain a nonviolent presence.Kai, our new full time worker at the
Center, declared, "This is not enough." "The tea baggers are
stealing the show and defining the debate in the media," he said, "we
need to have hundreds get arrested in non-violent civil disobedience to put our
stories in the spotlight." "And this is what we know how to do,"
he finished. I have to admit - at first, I thought he was crazy. We have no money,
and few resources. But after just a few weeks of networking, it became clearthat many areinterested in the idea, and a few were calling us to
make it happen.
         "What
if?" we thought. What if . .. we did something on the scale the civil
rights activists did to revive their movement in 1960 when the segregationists
had taken over the debate withridiculous lies and political maneuvering. A few small groups of
activist students sat down at lunch counters in downtown stores in Greensboro then
Nashville then Atlanta - and then it spread like wildfire to cities all across
the South.Everyone has a story, and it is time for our stories to be told - not about hyped-up
fears of government tyranny but about all the pain and suffering that is
already happening because of greedy insurance corporations and our broken
healthcare system that denies people care.
 So
here is the plan. . . I recommended watching this wonderful youtube video we
put together http://www.youtube.com/user/Mobilize4HealthCare. . . but if that is not
working here is our plan in writing. http://www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org
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