Why hasn't healthcare become a civil or human rights issue, such as those that inspired mass movements and radical policy changes in the past? Dying because you don't have a cheaply laminated card issued to you as a profit center rather than a patient cannot be fixed by polarizing documentaries by skillfully divisive filmmakers alone. As Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar recently pointed out, the healthcare deprived have yet to unite and organize in any significant or pragmatic ways for change, unlike worker, racial and gender groups have done so successfully last century, and immigrants are trying to do in ours.
Organizing the many millions without or with poor healthcare locally, regionally, nationally and globally could very well be the key movement of the 21st century along with that of migrants. Doing so effectively and non-violently would fundamentally change the political arena and the priorities of government spending. Healthcare leaders, not CEOs of HMOS or government bureaucrats but inspirational and skilled devotees, could join the ranks of civil rights and labor heroes. Here's a few preliminary ideas about how:
-Start with information-sharing and social networking: Newsletters, magazines, websites, Facebook Pages and the like can be used among those with access to such technology to connect and share tips, ideas and stories of how to improve their healthcare situation.
-Proven grassroots organizing and mobilization strategies such as those that brought Obama into power can be used just as well for the benefit of those without healthcare and to improve its quality, either as a next step after technologically-based information-sharing and social networking or as first step when and where these are not available.
-Use the very same tactics as healthcare corporations do to advance their agendas: hire lobbyists to compete with theirs, create non-profit organizations where they have profit-seeking ones, seek funding from wealthy donors like they do investors, and above all be superior to them in quality, efficiency, and humanity on each and every point.
-Unite, unite, unite: People who are sick can hardly participate in a March on Washington or the like, and neither can their caregivers. This fact will require more creative forms of communication with lawmakers, as the tried and true methods of peaceful mass protest may not so readily apply, and require the involvement of those indirectly affected to a high degree, for which their working models such as organizations that work reducing poverty. Why not donate flexible spending dollars you haven't used for dollar-for-dollar tax credit?
We must begin to see healthcare lapses, from nutrition to shelter and sanitation and medical care to education, as a current event to be permanently eliminated as the only way to create a sustainable future of shared peace and prosperity.
