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National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc. |
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an educational foundation and advocacy organization serving mental health consumers and professionals |
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NCMHPC | |
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National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc. |
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an educational foundation and advocacy organization serving mental health consumers and professionals |
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| THE CLAXONS* KEEP SOUNDING! The claxon *(air raid) alarms sounded for hours, for days, during and after the attacks on Pearl Harbor – a faint, but distinct set of memories when my family and I (a toddler, of course) were there. We have had further horrendous “sneak attacks” on our home turf on September 11, 2001. However - the steady, unrelenting and open, as well as sneak, attacks on America’s health care systems have been continuing for decades. The onslaught on all fronts only picks up momentum, the momentum of a wealthy juggernaut moving for more and more profits, moving against all activist resistance and moving over our nation’s people. • Americans wanted these 2004 elections to be a genuine national debate and to be a referendum on health care. Lord knows, it was not! • Americans had wanted the 2002 elections to be a referendum on health care. They were not! • Americans hoped the 2004 primaries would be a genuine national debate on health care. They were not! The time for the real referendum on health care is still with us, and the health care reform movement can make it happen. The election may be over, but the influence is not. There is little doubt that the 2004 elections focused a great deal of attention on how the problems facing our health care system burning interest to a large majority of Americans. Even though we may not be ready to agree on precisely which reform ideas are the most useful, we still must keep sounding the claxons with loud and clear messages - we have to change the current direction of U.S. health care policy. The worst scenario is to spend the next four years only debating the differences amongst ourselves - our main task is to keep sounding the alarms on what devastation has happened and to work for a solid change of direction. Look at what is happening to our nation’s people! • Look at what is already happening to Medicaid, to Medicare, to prescription drug prices, to health care professionals, to public and community practitioners and health care facilities. • Look at the rising number of uninsured and grossly under-insured people in our country. It is not an exaggeration to say that four more years of tax cuts will bankrupt the public treasury and will most likely destroy all publicly funded health care programs as we know them. • We are losing our newborns, our mental health, our very lives and health - because of what is still being done to health care systems right now. America has become sicker and poorer. The American people deserve better health care and Washington is going the wrong way to fix all that’s so badly broken. • Medicaid is being starved to death, and Medicaid women and children are suffering more than ever. The current wave of cuts in state budgets is just the beginning. • Medicare is being bankrupted right out from under our parents and our children because of legislation that authorizes new profits for pharmaceutical and insurance companies. • The loss of employer-provided insurance is accelerating in a supposed "employer-based" system. That leaves more and more people without insurance. • “Consumer-driven” means to blame the people, who are kept uninformed, under informed, or and disinformed – the spins and sound bytes of official and corporate propaganda – and “consumer-driven” is more and more coming down to consumer-pays-all and consumer-gets-less. Where does all this leave us? All of us in our nation, and the generations to come, cannot afford four more years of medical/health care malpractice in Washington, and in our States. We cannot let our legacy be more sickness and more poverty. The job of health care advocates this year is to get into the thick of the debate, sound the claxons – sound the alarms - far and wide and to encourage Americans everywhere to hold our elected officials accountable for the policies they promote. The election may be over, but the influence is not. But there is also little doubt that it focused a great deal of attention on an issue of burning interest to a large majority of Americans—the problems facing our health care system. Take heart in Bob Borosage’s message, from the Campaign for America’s Future, “So we have to get smarter, work harder, learn how to make our case better and find ways to communicate it across America's increasingly separated nations. The task is daunting. But we can undertake it, confident that, as Dr. Martin Luther King taught, the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.” What Can We Do? We activists do provide the organizers, the ground forces, the energy, the ideas and money. We must keep organizing our movement. Here are some starting ideas: • Keep Preparing for the Fight - the President’s agenda will keep firing up the opposition forces. President Bush’s budget, leads with $70+ billion more for Iraq and leads with budget cuts across the board for domestic programs, and will highlight the horrible costs in lives – here and abroad. He is claiming a “mandate” for a radical domestic agenda—privatization of Social Security, tax reform to reward wealth over work, tort "reform" to limit victims' rights to recover from negligent corporations, more testing in schools while cutting resources needed to fix the problems. He's likely to make an early Supreme Court appointment. We need to be ready tonight, offering Americans a clear choice. • Get on the Offensive. Mount a powerful assault the blatant giveaway of taxpayers' money to corporate contributors. In health care subsidies to the wealthy, to corporate insurance and pharmaceutical cronies. • Get more Proactive -Aggressively argue our case and even more effectively. Politicians are now scrambling for ways to appeal to the "values" voter. We should be making our case in moral terms, not simply in the language of policy seminars. • These are moral imperatives for a healthier nation! The values of the most civilizing movements of the decades in my lifetime can guide us well - the civil rights movement, the anti-Viet Nam War movement, the women's movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement, the human rights movement. • Work really hard on building our capacity for action and for generating ideas, developing messages, communicating the issues and implementing the projects of our organization. The National Coalition is Preparing, Will Take the Offensive More, with Proactive Positions and Projects and with the moral imperative, the values of genuine justice in America guiding us. Our preparation includes the expansion of the Board of Directors of The National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers. We are proud to announce the elections of Laura Groshong, LICSW, of Seattle, Washington, Gordon Herz, Ph.D., of Madison, Wisconsin, Frank Froman, Ed.D., of Quincy, Illinois, and Louis Pansulla, Jr., LCSW, of New York City, New York. They already have begun making wonderful contributions to our work. We are privileged, and grateful, to have them with us, and look forward to the vast experience, the passion and commitment to health care justice and reform which Laura, Frank, Gordon, and Lou are bringing to their collaborative work with us. Our members are further honored by a former Board Member, Sheri Larivee, who has resumed being Chair of the Consumer Committee, and by several other Members who have become new working committee members! Patricia Dowds, Ph.D., resigned from active Board Membership in September, in order to devote herself to a major family therapy training project for professionals in interagency collaborative work in Suffolk County, Long Island. For over 9 years, Pat brought continuously superb leadership and major contributions to the National Coalition as Vice-President, Board Member, Liaison Committee Chair and our representative to the UHCAN Board of Directors, as well as her several early years of tireless, professional work as the Co-Editor of the Coalition Report. The National Coalition is forever indebted to Pat, whose public service thankfully continues! And, we have added our new part-time Office Manager, Kathleen Saccardi, already an invaluable, most competent asset since she began in August. Welcome, Kathleen - we are very fortunate you have joined with us! Michelle Curiacopoulos has left as the office manager after many years of cheerfully and inspiringly supportive and devoted service. Thank you for everything, Michelle!sives. The National Coalition is, and will, fight on to preserve quality care and patient choice, privacy, and decision-making power. We are continuing our extensive networking and collaborative projects with many health care and social justice organizations, as well as with many organizations of mental health and substance abuse professionals from all practitioner disciplines. We are determined to expand our Campaign to Inform America of what systems of real mental health and substance abuse care require. And we remain dedicated to replace Managed Health Care, with a pro-patient, pro-quality, pro-consumer system accessible for all. More than ever we need all your active support in donations, volunteering for committee work, membership recruitment and very wide distribution of information about all work. Thank you so very much. Dave Byrom |
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