So we're mad as hell, and ... ?

I went to the Cleveland appearance of the Mad as Hell Doctors last night at Laborers Hall. This is a group of doctors from Oregon who are traveling across country in a Winnebago on their way to a rally in Washington D.C. tomorrow in support of single-payer health care. Along the way they’ve been stopping in various cities holding events.

https://madashelldoctorstour.com/

The Cleveland event had a nice turnout – about 150 people. A lot of local social justice groups were there, especially advocates of health-care reform such as SPAN Ohio and the area chapter of the National Nurses Organizing Committee. Several state legislators were in attendance too: Mike Skindell, Mike Foley, Kenny Yuko and Dale Miller all showed up. Good for them.

It was clear before going into the building — from all the Kucinich stickers in the parking lot — that this group of people was definitely the proverbial choir. And that was the problem with the event. The traveling doctors, as well as some local doctors and nurses, talked about what’s wrong with the current health-care system and how much it costs us to get too little in return. There was a phone call from Dennis Kucinich. There was testimony from people like a former nurse who had had three strokes and was now bankrupt after leading exactly the kind of responsible life we're told we should lead. She got a standing ovation for being a victim of a system everyone there despised. The entire audience was clearly familiar with all the facts being laid out and in complete agreement. More than an hour was spent telling people what they knew

But what the event DIDN'T do was empower those people to go out and DO something. The “what you can do” portion of the event was maybe five minutes tacked on the end, an afterthought. And it pretty much boiled down to "If you can't go to D.C. with us, take some flowers with a white ribbon [the group’s logo] somewhere local" (I got a call today from someone at the meeting who said they were going to a downtown insurance company on E. 9th tomorrow at 11 a.m.), "Give us a little money for gas" and "Talk to your friends."

I found it frustrating because I didn't hear a strategy to combat the tens of millions of dollars that insurance companies are spending to buy votes and public opinion. Even "talk to your friends" would have been more useful had the audience been given a set of responses to use to rebut common misconceptions. I just don’t see how more than an hour’s worth of “Our current health-care system sucks” repeated over and over helps move us toward a better one.