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With the public option now being outfitted with an opt-out provision, with leaders doing everything they can to make sure the option will fail to compete with insurance companies, and with Sen. Joe Lieberman publicly declaring that he has no problem with obstructing a vote on health care on behalf of for-profit insurers, isn't it time to up the ante?
And isn't it time for more doctors and nurses to come out of the woodwork for real healthcare reform?
"We swore an oath when we finished our medical school and part of that was to practice our professional dignity and honor and to keep the health of our patients first and foremost," says Flowers. "So, how can we continue to be silent in the face of a private insurance market-based model of healthcare which is literally killing our patients?"
"We're all complicit in this. We're forced to be complicit," says Weinberg. "What we want is patient care. We want the best possible patient care for people and we are constantly having to play games to skirt around what the insurance companies are forcing us to do."
Or, as Hendrickson so eloquently puts it:
"It is a personal decision and everybody knows when it's the right time to make that sacrifice. Doctors do have an enormous moral authority in our society. And when you see physicians that advocate for a status quo approach that the American Medical Association has basically pushed, it really hurts our image as physicians.
We as physicians have a noble duty to care for our patients. And to be given an opportunity to make a relatively small sacrifice ---spend a few hours, maybe a night in jail--- in exchange for bringing this issue of the private insurance industry and how much harm they're doing to medicine [to the forefront]--- I think it's a phenomenal opportunity
And, Hendrickson hopes the physicians getting arrested tomorrow and others planning to be arrested in the next wave in November will give "more confidence, more motivation, more inspiration to follow suit because so many of us know how badly the insurance industry is harming our ability to practice medicine."
Flowers is a pediatrician and mother who quit her practice a few years ago to educate legislators, colleagues, and others on real healthcare reform.
Weinberg is an emergency care physician who has been practicing for twenty-five years and who has been advocating for single-payer for fifteen years.
Hendrickson is a self-employed doctor.
Each of these doctors will be participating in actions, which will occur Wednesday, October 28th or Thursday, October 29th. MobilizeforHealthcare.org will post updates on the actions as they are received.
To join or support the campaign that is motivating doctors to risk arrest, visit Mobilization for Health Care for All and sign up today.
Video of Margaret Flowers, one of the "Baucus Eight"
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