Community Post

Big Crowd at the Healthcare March – Updated

I’m here at Pratt Park with the CD Newshound and several thousand other folks as the Healthcare for All rally and march starts to get under way.

Beware that the route will run down Yesler, Jackson, and 4th ave to Westlake Center downtown. So expect big delays if youre going to be out and about this afternoon.

Update: 12:43pm – The rally is getting underway with a performance by the Total Experience Gospel Choir. Peoplecontinue to stream in to the park, probably close to 5,000 people now.

Update: 1:10pm – Seen a lot of neighborhood faces at the rally, but buses brought folks 
in from all over the state

Update: 1:36pm – The rally is ending, march about to start . Yesler now shut down from 20th.

Update: 2:07pm – The march has now cleared the Central District and is heading downtown. All streets are back open as far as 12th.

This was the biggest march I’ve ever seen here in the Central District. It took 16 minutes for it to pass by, and took up all of Jackson from 12th up to 18th.

Here’s some more snapshots from the event:

Health Care for All Dogs

Healthcare rally entrepreneurship

0 thoughts on “Big Crowd at the Healthcare March – Updated

  1. I agree. Tremendous crowd for a nice Saturday when everyone could have been doing something else. Now let’s really, REALLY do something about messed up health care.

  2. I’m very glad there was such a good turnout for this event. I was out working on the Clean Greens Farm, so unable to come. Thanks to all who marched!!

  3. My heart was with the marchers, but my sore knee said no. Instead I went to the Islamic School Carnival, which turned out to be a heart-warming, family-oriented celebration at which I found a few of my neighbors attending also. There were a huge number of extremely well-behaved children enjoying the food, games, slide, pony ride, etc. A thoroughly enjoyable experience!

  4. Totally agreed… The million dollar question, though…do you think it will get cheaper (with the same level or better level of care) once it becomes nationalized, thereby implying more government intervention? If you think it’s expensive now, just wait until it’s free.

  5. Ok, so if we do get single payer, you two can opt out and decide not to go to the doctor when you get sick or pay for you own insurance.

  6. Joew, while I don’t claim to have _the_ answer, there are many, many problems with our current healthcare system. My niece, who was a nurse, suffered a traumatic head injury. My sister (a lawyer), our mother (a nurse), and aunt (also a nurse), had to continually advocate and push for my niece to get proper treatment. Even with this advocacy my niece was released directly from the hospital to my sister’s care after minimal rehab in the hospital. This was at least in part due to pressure from the insurance company. Her condition declined and she had to be re-hospitalized, underwent additional surgery, and was then released to a rehab facility. This should have happened initially. Thankfully, my niece is determined to recover, and her condition has improved. She is now at home with my sister after intensive therapy at the rehab facility.

    This need for constant advocacy is not isolated to my niece’s case. I’ve seen it in other traumatic hospitalizations as well. Both my mother and aunt who are part of the system say it needs to change. Often non-medical administrators end up making decisions which directly impact treatment for patients. We pay more and get less than most other Western nations for our healthcare. In my niece’s case, the decisions made ended up costing more in the long run, not less. This doesn’t even take into consideration the emotional cost our family went through during the ordeal. Do I have the answer for the perfect healthcare system? No. But I do know we need to have a full and open discussion about _all_ the options. We may just be able to come up with a brilliant and innovative solution if we share all our ideas and perspectives.

    Personally, I have a hard time when profit becomes more important than the health of people. Which is not to say I believe they are mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe our society as a whole profits when its people are healthy.

  7. My mom, who’s self-employed, had a back injury and needed surgery. Her first surgery was unsuccessful (in that it did not remove the fragment from her spine), and she needed a second surgery. There were, of course, other expenses too – my 55-year-old mother completely depleted her retirement savings and took a second mortgage on the house to pay for her care AND skipped medications, physical therapy, etc. because she couldn’t afford them after paying for two surgeries.

    She *does* have a major medical plan, but even after she’d paid her (extremely large) deductible, it turned out that they wouldn’t cover any of her expenses unless she went back for the second surgery to the same doctor who’d bungled her first surgery. All in all, it wasn’t even a major medical mishap – imagine if she’d had to have extensive hospitalization, or long-term care.

    So, yeah, there are some problems.

  8. Check out the Canadian plan or many others. Most spend less for more than we do.

  9. Some might find this article from the New Yorker interesting, in terms of seeing how / why our current health care system is expensive in the ways that it is:

    THE COST CONUNDRUM
    What a Texas town can teach us about health care.
    by Atul Gawande

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_

    “As America struggles to extend health-care coverage while curbing health-care costs, we face a decision that is more important than whether we have a public-insurance option, more important than whether we will have a single-payer system in the long run or a mixture of public and private insurance, as we do now. . . .”

  10. Expensive because of the government? That’s a pretty uninformed statement. Medicare, a government run program, you’ll find is efficient.

    What is the problem is the middle layer of all the insurance companies and processing through them.

    Sorry if that is where you get your bacon…

  11. Yes, and how many of us want to pay Canadian taxes? Seriously, 40% marginal tax rates on $100K joint incomes? No thanks.

    What America needs is rationing. Seriously, rationing. Too many people take sh*t care of themselves and then expect Cadillac service from the medical industry