Congressional Briefing a Success!

Momentum builds following September Hearings in Miami

The NAP and co-sponsoring organizations conducted a Congressional Briefing and Press Conference Friday, March 27 on the healthcare crisis and the need for action now. Using the theme “We Can Change Healthcare: Working Until It Is Done,” the hearing featured patients telling their stories, providers who deal with uninsured or underinsured patients every day and clergy discussing the moral dimension of this issue.

NAP’s Vice President for Public Policy Marie DiCowden, PhD, kicked off the session with a talk that focused on two interrelated themes:

1) The need for access to health care for all given the crisis in the number of un-and underinsured; and 2) The need for access not to the current system, but a system transformed to one featuring interprofessional, accountable care. 
 
She was followed by Vice President for Health Affairs, New York Institute of Technology, Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee, who discussed the effects of inadequate health insurance in creating and perpetuating health disparities. Next came two patients.
 
Louis Garcia, a successful restaurant owner in Miami who has had health insurance for 30 years, spoke about the combination of cancer, diabetes and a heart condition that has caused his premiums to escalate to $2,500 monthly.  He has had to max out his credit cards and take a second mortgage on his house to pay for deductibles and co-pays of up to $40,000 every year for the 14 life-saving medications he must take every day.
 
Maria Perez spoke on behalf of her son who was in his mid-30s.  His Type 1 diabetes, diagnosed when he was in college at age 21, has so ravaged him that he became legally blind and could not work. However, because he could not afford private insurance and does not qualify for public programs, he could not receive adequate care. Depressed, he became suicidal and at the time of the hearing, had been rehospitalized at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have been saved - in physical and emotional care - if there were adequate health insurance in this country. 
 
Finally, Clergyperson Donna Schaper from Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square, New York City, spoke movingly about the moral responsibility we all have to care for our most vulnerable citizens, sharing the dilemmas she hears every day as she tries to help congregants who cannot get the care and medications they need due to the USA’s broken health care system.
 
Congressman John Conyers, who attended the session, called the patient stories “compelling” and called forcefully for passage of the health reform legislation we need to have universal coverage. A letter was read from Congressman Robert Wexler, supporting the National Academies of Practice and their call for health care access for all.
 
Co-sponsoring and collaborating organizations included the American Psychological Association, the APA Practice Directorate, the American Nurses Association, the National Physician’s Alliance and direct health providers such as the Florida Association for Federally Qualified Health Centers along with two Miami centers, the Borinquen Clinic and the Biscayne Institutes of Health & Living. All Congressional Health LA’s were invited together with other interested nonprofit organizations. 

Another briefing is being planned! Check your e-mail for more details.