2022 SPAN Ohio Annual Meeting Report

Focusing on Healthcare Disparities

For the first time since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic we were able to hold a live, face-to-face meeting and dinner — especially important since we were also celebrating SPAN’s 20th Anniversary! Despite lingering concerns about a live (rather than virtual) meeting, a robust number of individuals (62) attended. We sought to reduce risk by masking and requiring proof of vaccination for the meeting, which was held at the Quest Conference Center in Columbus.

The speakers this year shared an impressive array of knowledge and experience, presented in a relaxed and engaging manner. Lively Q & A sessions followed each presentation. Representatives from the Poor People’s Campaign also treated us to a rousing call to action. Tim Bruce has posted videos of the talks to our YouTube channel for those who were unable to attend or would like to review at leisure. Links follow each speaker’s bio.

Speakers

Johnathon Ross, MD, our SPAN Secretary and former president of PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) introduced the proceedings with a lively overview of historical attempts at health care reform and a brief history of SPAN Ohio.

SPAN Ohio Business Meeting

Presentation of 2022 Smiddie Award for exceptional contributions. This year’s recipient of the award was Bob Parker, Communication Committee Chair, who willingly takes on what needs to be done and follows through.

Election of Officers for the next two years:

          State Director:                      Matthew (NJ) Noordsij-Jones, MD

          Past State Director:              Debbie Silverstein

          Associate State Director:      Kendall Mays          

          Treasurer:                             Barbara Walden

          Secretary:                             Johnathon Ross, MD

Election of Regional Coordinators for the next two years:

          Region 1:  Cathe Caraway

          Region 2:  Dennis Slotnick

          Region 3:  OPEN

          Region 4:  Dee Chavez

          Region 5:  Bob Krasen

          Region 6:  OPEN

          Region 7:  Tim Bruce

NEWS

The Walk for Healthcare Justice in Columbus during ComFest at Goodale Park June 25th

Participating SPAN Ohio members were: Arlene Sheak, Kurt Bateman, Brad Cotton, Mindy Hedges, Bob Krasen, Joan Matyskella and Melanie Morrison.

We walked down a main midway along Park Street with people lined up on both sides of the street. We stopped along the way to hand out information, signs, and small flags, some from a National Nurses United event.  Krasen made comments over a bull horn about Medicare for All as we inched down the midway. Arriving at the entrance to the park, SPAN members took turns telling their stories about why Medicare for All is needed, how it would benefit us all. They aimed the horn at larger gatherings of people, the biggest being that in line to get beer.

After the speeches, we made our way back to where we started, again engaging people as we slowly made our way.

While the effect of this effort is unknown, sometimes it is important to just "wave the flag" about Medicare for All, getting the words into people's heads, where hopefully at some point it will trigger a response. So far we have collected $400 in this fundraising effort.

Bob Krasen, Region 5 Coordinator

REGIONAL REPORTS

Regional Coordinators, with their contact information, are noted. Please contact the Coordinator for your region if you would be interested in joining. If you would consider filling an open chair, please contact span@spanohio.org.

Region 1 (Cleveland, Northeast Ohio)

Coordinator: Cathe Caraway (310-749-6111)  cathe@carawaylaw.com

• Cleveland area members held a Health Care Justice Walk on June 11th [see photos below]. The Health Care Walk is our annual fundraising effort, and we have raised over $4,500 so far (donations are still coming in).

• We have been doing some tabling at events.
• We spoke about Healthcare and Corporate Contributions at the Cleveland Heights Democracy Day on June 11.  About 20 people spoke about various aspects of how Corporate Contributions to political campaigns distorted our democracy.  Bob Parker of SPAN spoke on Medicare for All and how it is affected by Corporate Money.  Video here
  
• At the SPAN State Annual Conference in April, Cathe Caraway was elected as the new Region 1 Coordinator.

Next meeting for Cleveland SPAN is Saturday, July 23rd at 4 p.m., in person. For more information, contact clevelandspan@spanohio.org.

Bob Parker

Region 2 (Toledo, Northwest Ohio)

Coordinator: Dennis Slotnick (419-704-1863) slotnicks4@aol.com

As a follow-up to Democracy Day 2022, we have been invited to present the Medicare for All resolution to the Health Promotion and Access committee of Toledo City Council.  Democracy Day (3/30/22) was co-hosted by Toledo Move to Amend and Our Revolution in Northwest Ohio.  This year’s event was attended by many SPAN members, students from University of Toledo and Climate Reality Project.

Four out of six Health Committee members have publicly stated support for single payer health care so we are confident it will pass the committee.

Dennis Slotnick

Region 3 (Southeast Ohio)

Coordinator: Open 

Region 4: (Cincinnati and Southwest Ohio)

Coordinator: Deliah (Dee) Chavez  (513-413-1178) Dee49@fuse.net

Region 4 activists tabled at the Pride Festival on June 25th and reached many people, adding 75 to our database!

We participated in the annual Cincinnati 4th of July parade.

Our the next meeting date is July 27th.

Dee Chavez

Region 5: (Columbus and Central OhIo)

Region 5 meeting was on June 9th. 10 people attended the ZOOM meeting.

Discussed:

• Legislation in Congress, HR 1976 and S 4204, and in the Ohio Legislature, HB 446 and SB 253. Attendees were encouraged to call their 5 Representatives (3 in Congress and 2 in the State House) to ask for proponent hearings.
• We reviewed the SPAN Ohio current committees and encouraged participants to sign up for any of them.
• Arlene Sheak did a brief presentation on Direct Contracting Entities and Reach, which are privatizing Medicare, and eventually will make it difficult or impossible to pass Medicare for All-type legislation.
• Bob Krasen did a brief report on a contact with a representative of the Franklin County Commission to gain a Resolution of Support for Medicare for All-type legislation. Additional follow up contact is needed.
• Report on the June SPAN Ohio State Council meeting. Of most interest was the offer of support (tent, table, chairs, and clipboards) for tabling at community events. We will attempt to host one in Columbus for the Hot Times Festival in August.
  

Bob Krasen

Region 6: (Akron, Canton and East Central Ohio)

Coordinator: Open 

Region 7 (Dayton and West Central Ohio)

Several SPAN veterans have been supportive as I take over as Region 7 Coordinator. NJ and his wife Kathy have been helpful as has Barbara Walden. Dee Chavez has promised advice.

Events past: We participated in the Dayton Pride Parade and tabled at the Pride Festival at Courthouse Square in downtown Dayton June 4th. NJ also set up a table in the Oregon District where the Dayton Dykes had organized a concurrent event. We received donations for some tee shirts and collected over 100 signed letters to state legislators in support of our single payer bills.

Upcoming events: We are planning to sponsor a porch at Dayton’s Porchfest in St. Anne’s Hill district Saturday August 20th.

We plan to have a table at the Yellow Springs Street Fair in the fall, date still to be determined.

Two members of the Dayton City Commission support our effort to pass a resolution in support of the two Medicare for All bills in congress. The resolution has yet to be debated and we will be looking for people to testify for its passage when a date is set.

Next Region 7 meeting will be Sunday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m. via Zoom.

Tim Bruce

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Equity Committee Report

We are actively working to increase the numbers of BIPOC involved in SPAN. In addition, we are

·         Planning Latinx Health Equity Workshop for September

Thank you to all who came to our "Don't Be Misled on Lead" event May 10th. 

Lobby Committee report

The Lobby Committee has been sending emails and making phone calls to Rep. Tom Brinkman, District 27, (east side of Cincinnati), urging him as Chair of the House Insurance Committee to hold proponent testimony hearings for HB 446, 'The Ohio Health Act'. We have urged Brinkman's constituents to do so as well. All to no avail, as we have gotten absolutely NO RESPONSE!

We are also contacting other members of the House Insurance Committee, again with NO RESPONSE!

All members of SPAN Ohio are strongly encouraged to find out who your state representatives and senators are! Then contact them to set up meetings to discuss HB 446 and SB253! Lobby Committee members will help you with settng up meetings.

Find out if you are a constituent of one of the members of the House and Senate Insurance Committees and write to them!

In addition, find out who is running in upcoming primary and midterm elections.

Talk to them about your support for universal publicly funded health care and urge them to find out more on the subject by checking out spanohio.org website.

Look up the Health Policy Institute website to find out facts about Ohio's healthcare status.

RECOMMENDED READING

It's time for Medicare for All

Now is the time to improve and extend Medicare to everyone

The United States has the most dysfunctional, inefficient, bureaucratic and expensive health care system in the world.

That’s not just what I believe. That’s what the American people know to be true.  .  .  .

Would a Medicare-for-all health care system be expensive? Yes. But, while providing comprehensive health care for all, it would be significantly LESS costly than our current dysfunctional system because it would eliminate an enormous amount of the bureaucracy, profiteering, administrative costs and misplaced priorities inherent in our current for-profit system.

Under Medicare for All there would no longer be armies of people billing us, telling us what is covered and what is not covered and hounding us to pay our hospital bills. This not only saves substantial sums of money but will make life a lot easier for the American people who no longer have to fight their way through the nightmare of insurance company bureaucracy.

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medicare for All would save Americans $650 billion a year.

Now, trust me. I know the 30-second ads coming from the insurance and drug companies will tell you that if Medicare for All becomes law, your taxes will go up. And they are correct. But what they won’t tell you is that under Medicare for All, you will no longer be paying premiums, deductibles and co-payments to private health insurance companies.

And what they certainly will not tell you is that Medicare for All will save the average family thousands of dollars a year. In fact, a study by RAND found that moving to a Medicare-for-all system in New York would save a family with an income of less than $185,000 about $3,000 a year, on average.

Now, if Medicare for All was so great, you might ask, why hasn’t it been enacted by now? Why hasn’t the United States joined every major country on earth in guaranteeing health care for all?

Well, the answer is pretty simple. Follow the money .  .  . 

Read full article

Under the Radar

Do you know what DCE’s are? Or the Reach Program? Do you know how they threaten the very existence of Medicare as we know it? Do you understand how, their success could destroy the chances of us ever getting a universal single payer healthcare system? Be informed. Read the statement by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) as well as the Jacobin’s backstory on the current administration’s support for these programs.

PNHP Fact Sheet

Biden’s Little-Publicized Medicare Privatization Scheme Is Starting To Raise Alarm Bells

Branko Marcetic
May 12, 2022 Jacobin Magazine

There’s good news and bad news about the Joe Biden administration’s ongoing pursuit of the Direct Contracting Entity (DCE) program, also known as ACO REACH. The bad news is that the idea remains a threat to the health of seniors and an alarming Trojan horse that could lead to the privatization of Medicare. The good news is that resistance to it is beginning to gain some traction.

Read full article

Resolution 10: Winning Guaranteed Health Care for All

 (The following resolution, taken from the AFL-CIO website, was passed at their 2022 Convention)

June 13, 2022 AFL-CIO

The Resolution states, in part:

In too many ways, our health care system is broken. The sick routinely forgo care because treatment is unaffordable or unavailable. Working people face higher and higher premiums, deductibles and co-pays, and too often are left with crippling debt when serious illness affects a family member. Health care corporations, insurers and investors are more focused on extracting ever more money from workers, employers and governments than on improving care. Quality and access are compromised by industry consolidation. Lip service is given to honoring health care workers instead of truly supporting their work.

This system was ill-prepared to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of people suffered illness, loss of work and income, or even death. After decades of underfunding, our public health infrastructure struggled to get vaccines into arms, provide tests and mitigate the virus’s spread. The crisis forced policymakers to lavish funding on vaccine makers, testing companies and hospitals—with workers ultimately paying the tab through their premiums and tax dollars. Too many lives have been lost, and too many front-line health care workers have paid a terrible personal toll. This lesson drives us to pursue fundamental changes to achieve health care justice.

Making Health Care a Basic Right

. . . Our goal is to move toward a single-payer system, like Medicare for All, that provides universal coverage using a social insurance model while retaining the critical role of workers’ health plans. Any such system must guarantee everyone can get the health services they need without exclusions or financial barriers to care, and with access to high-quality doctors, hospitals and other health care providers.  

Read the full resolution

How Much Money is Worth Killing 212,000 Americans in a Single Year?

If saving trillions of dollars and millions of lives isn’t enough to end political bribery in America, what will it take?

According to Open Secrets, the amount spent just last year bribing Congress to keep our healthcare system in place was $689,466,798.00. Almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.

In exchange, the health insurance industry took home $19 billion in profits last year, hospitals took home over $70 billion in profits, and the pharmaceutical industry made similarly huge profits last year: at least $100 billion.

And that was after each of these three industries — that have a stake in keeping our healthcare system as broken and dysfunctional as possible — had handed out billions in compensation to their senior executives and board members. Not to mention stockholder dividends..  .  . 

Last year over 500,000 families were destroyed by bankruptcies caused by a family member getting sick: every single one was in the USA. This is an unknown “problem” in every other developed nation on planet Earth.

.  .  . 

Our healthcare system let over 200,000 Americans die in 2020 just to preserve its profits. It handed part of those profits to politicians to keep the system in place. And, somehow, those politicians sleep at night and can look themselves in the mirror.

A national single-payer healthcare system would save us trillions of dollars and millions of lives every decade.  .  .  .

Read full article

SPAN Ohio links

To send articles, events, letters, or comments to this newsletter, please email them to the Communications Committee (Lynne Rustad, Tim Bruce, Matt Noordsij-Jones, Linda Brown, Barbara Walden, Tina Bayne, and Bob Parker [Chair])

This newsletter is posted under Resources on the SPAN Web Site

.

Copyright © 2022 Single-Payer Action Network Ohio (SPAN Ohio), All rights reserved. You can unsubscribe from SPAN Ohio's email list here.

View as a Web Page