On the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon, about one thousand activists trying to save #LICH and #Interfaith took part in a mock funeral march mourning the collapse in public health caused by the threat of several Brooklyn hospital closings. Here, members of OWS Healthcare for the 99% portrayed Gov. Andrew Cuomo as the Grim Reaper responsible for trying to close Brooklyn hospitals.
Read more : March, rally to protest Long Island College Hospital closing
A member of Strike Debt was interviewed on RTAmerica about the Rolling Jubilee project to buy and forgive medical debt.
Last night members of Strike Debt and the Healthcare for the 99 Per Cent. Working Group of Occupy Wall Street were advocating for healthcare as a human right. Their demonstration was coördinated with the announcement of a spectacular medical debt relief initiative by the Occupy Wall Street offshoot known as Strike Debt.
OWS offshoot buys and wipes out more than $1 million in medical debt
Over 1,000 randomly-selected patients in Kentucky and Indiana will receive letters in the mail stating that their emergency room debt has been forgiven by the OWS offshoot known as Strike Debt.
The purpose of the "debt buy" is to call attention to “predatory” lending aspects our debt-ridden healthcare system, according to their Web site. Strike Debt refers to its debt relief program as the "Rolling Jubilee," a reference to a Biblical era event in which all debts are cancelled and all those in bondage are set free.
If a hospital is unable to get patients to pay their medical debts, the hospital usually sells this debt to a collection agency. And since the chances of a collection agency actually receiving payment in full are pretty low at that point, the collection agency is able to snatch up the bad medical debt for a much lower price than the original amount on a patient’s bill. The collection agency then begins hounding the debtor for money non-stop in often abusive and predatory methods.
Strike Debt funded their Rolling Jubilee campaign through donations, reported The New Daily News.
On April 1, 2012, members of the Healthcare for the 99 Per Cent. Working Group of Occupy Wall Street participated in a six month anniversary of the first OWS Brooklyn Bridge march. The theme of the April 1 march was likewise planned around healthcare issues and efforts to stop hospital closings.
A year ago, healthcare and Occupy activists were concerned about the direction of healthcare under Gov. Andrew Cuomo, according to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle report.
Spirits were high and the music was spirited, but the theme of the anniversary march was sobering -- the dire state of health care for Brooklyn residents, especially those served by five hospitals in crisis: Brooklyn Hospital Center, Interfaith Medical Center, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center.
Wall Street financier Stephen Berger, appointed by Gov. Cuomo to be in charge of restructuring health care in Brooklyn, is recommending that New York change its laws “to allow for-profit investors to invest in financially-distressed public hospitals.”
In spite of the protests and opposition during the year that has passed, Gov. Cuomo and Mr. Berger remain as obsessed as ever with their shady plans for the introduction of for-profit healthcare in New York City.
We collectively pay billions in healthcare premiums to insurance companies, but their profit motive denies our community hospitals of resources, forcing hospitals to treat patients as debtors.
Strike Debt has planned a week of actions in connection with debt relief. One affinity action will focus on how our market-driven, debt-ridden healthcare system drives hospitals to closure.
(Revised : Thursday 22 Nov 2012 1:15 p.m. EDT) The Rolling Jubilee has now raised over $400,000, which is approximately enough money to abolish over $8,000,000 in notional debt !
Thomas Gokey, an artist who is one of the co-founders of the Rolling Jubilee movement, an Occupy Wall Street off-shoot that raises money to buy debt and then “forgive” what people owe rather than collecting on the bills. (Current TV)
Hundreds of activists comprised of members of Healthcare for the 99% Working Group of Occupy Wall Street, PNHP, ACT UP, the Granny Peace Brigade, Occupy Queens, OCCU EVOLVE, and other groups protest against impending budget cuts to Medicare and healthcare across the street from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where President Obama and Mitt Romney were participating in the annual Al Smith Wall Street fundraiser.
ACT UP activists also rallied in support of a Financial Transaction Tax to raise money to pay for healthcare and treatments to break the HIV infection curve and end AIDS.
Activists first started a moving picket on the sidewalk in front of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, but police closed the public sidewalk to only registered guests of the hotel and to persons paying at least $2,500 to have dinner at the annual Al Smith Wall Street fundraiser.
Inside the hotel, President Obama and Mitt Romney dined on a luxurious menu that included poached lobster tail and dark chocolate tropical fruit cadeau ; meanwhile, due to the fact that Democrats and Republicans refuse to raise taxes on the top 1% of income earners, the federal government faces draconian budget cuts to core programs, such as Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.
After government integrity and healthcare activists held a mic check and balloon release inside Grand Central Station, the activists marched to Pfizer headquarters, where they did a speak-out and mocked the Pfizer marketing gimmick called, "Get Old."
Dr. Daniel Lugassy participates in a speak-out at a rally for a single-payer healthcare system outside of the closed St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. The Affordable Care Act will not end the financial crisis that can devastate patients, should they cannot afford to pay for their healthcare. CNN reported that medical bills lead to more than 60% of bankruptcy filings in the U.S.
Healthcare for the 99% : 'Why We Occupy Healthcare'
Here is a video of the Healthcare for the 99% working group of #OccupyWallStreet in a demonstration to save Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn. This is an example about why Occupy activists occupy healthcare.
#MayDay: Parts 1 and 2 : Die-In @ St. Vincent's Hospital
On May Day Healthcare for the 99% and members of the community participated in a March, Speak-Out, and Die-In protesting St. Vincent's Hospital being closed and replaced by condos.
Die-In : Part 1
Die-In : Part 2
May Day Protest At O'Toole Building (St. Vincent's)
Members of Demand a Hospital and Healthcare for the 99%, an official working group of Occupy Wall Street, staged a picket, an OWS-style “speak-out,” and a “DIE IN” to draw attention to “A COMMUNITY WITHOUT A HOSPITAL” at the former St. Vincent’s Hospital’s O’Toole Building at 30 Seventh Avenue (between 12th and 13th Streets) on May Day from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m.
Community groups cite the closure of St. Vincent’s Hospital as a public health crisis. The closing of the hospital has left more than a million residents, guests, and tourists on Manhattan’s Lower West Side without either a full service hospital or a Level 1 Trauma Center. Doctors, nurses, and patients will picket and stage a die-in to symbolize those who will die without access to necessary healthcare in the U.S.
While New York City, New York State, and the Medicaid Redesign Team make budget cuts to healthcare and close more and more hospitals, activists question why real estate developers and healthcare corporations can make large profits. In the face of public healthcare budget cuts and irresponsible and dangerous hospital closings, activists are organizing around the idea that a truly universal, single-payer healthcare system is the only viable option that will provide healthcare for all.
Members of the Healthcare for the 99% Working Group of #OccupyWallStreet joined with residents of the Lower West Side last Tuesday. Hundreds of people turned out to testify against a controversial rezoning application, which would convert St. Vincent's Hospital in the Lower West Side of Manhattan into a billion-dollar luxury condo and townhouse complex. Residents fear that with no hospital in such a large part of New York City would result in dangerous EMS response and transport times, which would lead to unnecessary deaths, such as the untimely death of Richard J. Sheirer, whose life might have been saved had there been a hospital in the Lower West Side of Manhattan.
Join us on Tuesday, Jan. 31, at 6 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center at 208 West 13th Street in the West Village.
With St. Vincent’s closed, the West Side still has no hospital beds below 57th Street. How can we bring a hospital back to our community ? How can we get true universal healthcare ? Come Join the Discussion ! RSVP at the Facebook page for the St. Vincent's Community Assembly.
This "town hall" is a consensus-based conversation facilitated by HEALTHCARE FOR THE 99%, an OCCUPY WALL STREET working group.
2012-01-31 St Vincents Community Assembly - Luxury Condos Cant Do CPR
The Rev. Jesse Jackson attends an #OccupyWallStreet meeting of the Healthcare for the 99 per cent. Working Group at Liberty Square (f/k/a Zuccotti Park) in New York City on December 4, 2011.
The civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson joined the regular weekly meeting of the the Healthcare for the 99 per cent. Working Group of #OccupyWallStreet in New York last Sunday.
At the meeting, the Rev. Jackson spoke about the "exorbitant, exploitative cost of medicine." The Rev. Jackson also spoke about how the issue of healthcare access and affordability has motivated many of the hundreds of thousands of members of the 1199SEIU union to want to become part of the #OccupyWallStreet movement.
The Rev. Jackson discussed how many of the "victims" of the broken healthcare system are absent from the #OccupyWallStreet movement, and he said it was the task of the movement to find a way to motivate them to participate.
Other economic issues that the Rev. Jackson said that the disenfranchised faced were incarceration, joblessness, home foreclosures, and high amounts of student loan and credit card debt. The Rev. Jackson asked members of the working group to consider whether the disenfranchised "occupied" where they are, or whether the disenfranchised needed a physical location in order to occupy. "Is occupy a place or a space ?" The Rev. Jackson made the point that location did not define the new social movement's constituents. He added, "Those are you patients and your friends."
One day after the Rev. Jackson attended a Liberty Square meeting of the Healthcare for the 99 per cent. Working Group, the Rev. Jackson published an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times entitled, "Cost of broken health care system is killing us."
