Donna Smith is best known as one of the documentary subjects of Michael Moore’s 2007 movie, "SiCKO." Her journalism career includes 15 regional awards from the AP Managing Editors. Donna now works as executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation, and co-chairs the Progressive Democrats of America’s national "Healthcare Not Warfare" campaign.
Fighting the Real Enemy: Cancer in America
For the second time in my life, I find myself in need of cancer care. Somehow it seems the universe conspires to put me in settings where I observe and can report on the on-going insanity of the dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system. Such was the case this week as I ...
Today I Pray, As Many American Patients Do
I admit it. I pray. I know there are intellectuals who are above such frivolity and for whom the showing of any belief in a power greater than one’s self and one’s intellect is the ultimate sign of weakness and inferiority. I don’t care. I am not weak, and just ...
On the Eve of NATO in My Hometown
Looking down on the Sears Tower tonight, you wouldn’t suspect a major event was just hours away. It’s quieter than most Saturday nights – except in Wrigleyville, where Chicago’s baseball and sports fans fill the streets and the bars as usual. But in other parts of my hometown, huge barricades ...
In the “Loop” with Morello Standing Against ‘Grotesque Income Inequality’
As Tom Morello prepares to come to his hometown and mine, Chicago, in advance of the NATO meeting, he calls what has happened to me and so many millions of people “grotesque income inequality.” He is so right. It’s grotesque. The rich get richer, and most of the poor get ...
Chicago in May: My Hometown, Where Power Rests in People
It’s so fitting that the nurses will march and rally in Chicago on May 18th as they lead a global campaign for the Robin Hood Tax – a small tax on financial transactions like stocks, bonds, and all the speculative trading on Wall Street. Chicago is my hometown, and Chicago ...
Profit-Driven Medicine Violates American Patients Young and Old
Though my grandson and I are in two different sections of the country and both facing different cancer scares, we share one thing more prominently than anything else. We are being violated as human beings in need of medical care by our health providers’ need to protect profits. The money ...
Fool’s Gold: U.S. Healthcare System Cheats Patients
In case any one of us needs reminding, the profit-driven healthcare system in America is broken. Driven by its primary motivation to make money, there is little that compels those currently in control to care about patients like you and me. We are most assuredly a necessary component of the ...
If the Other Shoe Drops, I Want Medicare
There has never been any doubt in my mind that if I face another cancer diagnosis that requires prolonged treatments and has an uncertain outcome, I would rather die than fight it. As an insured American who knows first-hand how quickly a cancer in my body turns to full out ...
Spring Has Sprung and So Has My New Medical Debt
It’s only April – early April at that – and my medical debt is already taking its toll. After surgery in January, the bills started rolling in before I was able to return to work. Yes, I have insurance, and I have a job. So I do consider myself lucky ...
Before and After: Healthcare Insanity in America
It doesn’t really matter what the Supreme Court does with the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). It’s a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” situation for millions of people. The system we have now is dominated by profit-takers. The system we might have under the ...
An Apple a Day Might Just Cut Profits
My mom said it. Her mom said it. I have even repeated it to my own children. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Yet as patients, healthcare professionals, and others who eat in our healthcare facilities around the country may notice, eating healthy fare – including apples – ...
How Far We Haven’t Come in My Lifetime – Yet
It’s International Women’s Day. While we might greet that with some passing commercial interest in the United States, in many other countries, it is a day to celebrate women – all women. Older, younger, richer, poorer, healthy, struggling with illness or caring for others with illness, mothers or daughters, married, ...
I Dreamed About My Cancer Docs Last Night
My sleep was restless last night except for the snippets of scenes where I was being tended to by my cancer doctors from some time ago. In those dreams they cared for my body and comforted my fears as we worked together to overcome my illness. Of course time had ...
An Anniversary – Heart-Sick and SiCKO
Just a few years ago, my dad died on February 13. It was just one day short of he and my mother’s 49th wedding anniversary. Just three weeks prior, Dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Though he was 75 years old, he was still working, and he was a force ...
Hospital Forms Need a 'Bum’s Rush' Clause
The forms we all sign as patients before we are admitted to the hospital or have surgery are inadequate and inaccurate. You know the forms. Those “assumption of risk” and “assignment of benefits” forms that supposedly disclose all the things that might happen to you during care so that the ...
Who knew? The poor did, that’s who.
Last evening, Tavis Smiley hosted a program that was broadcast live on C-SPAN live and that focused for two-and-a-half hours on the issue of poverty in America. It was terrific. The energy and commitment of the experts assembled to investigate and help alleviate poverty made the conversation rich beyond anything ...
2011: A SiCKO’s Year in Review
Thought I might pile on the end-of-the-year reviews with a regular soul’s view of 2011 and a bit of a look forward to 2012. I claim no special standing or expertise other than life experience and perhaps a healthier than usual dose of good fortune when I compare 2011 with ...
Un-Happy Holidays for Seniors and the Disabled – Here’s Your Donut
It isn’t sugar plums dancing in their dreams for America’s seniors and disabled who are covered by the Medicare program. It’s donuts. Donut holes into which many fall at this time of the year as they reach the maximum limits of the first tier of “Part D” prescription drug benefits. ...
Occupying Love and Joy for Nataline
Every year for the past four years around this time, Nataline Sarkisyan’s parents build toward an unimaginable anniversary filled with sorrow and pain. On December 20, 2007, they lost their only daughter, 17-year-old Nataline to corporate greed and insurance company cruelty. Nataline died after the insurance giant CIGNA initially denied ...
Power in Numbers: Millions Crowd to Occupy Life
One of the most powerful and interesting things about the Occupy Movement is its reach well beyond Wall Street or even the smallest tent encampments around the nation. The power to bloom and spread has been in its simultaneously coordinated actions combined with the movement’s lack of demands on its ...
We Shall Be Ashamed No More in Silence – Rise Up
Those who launched the Occupy Wall Street movement that has now blossomed into the occupations around the nation have many to thank for their inspiration. Those brave souls who were and are a part of the Arab Spring, the hundreds of thousands who marched and rallied in Madison, Wisconsin, in ...
Protestors' Message Pretty Simple and Clear: Enough is Enough
No matter how the media folks seem befuddled by what they claim is a lack of clarity from those at the Occupy Wall Street and its solidarity events throughout the nation, I hear one clear and concise message from them all. I am not speaking for them, but I live ...
Keep It Simple, Keep It Real – Hundreds Arrested on Bridge as Hundreds Die at Home
Hundreds of Wall Street protestors were arrested yesterday on the Brooklyn Bridge. Even the mainstream media is reporting that. That in itself is a milestone. For many years, groups organized by one faction or one political party or one self-motivated organization or special interest or another have tried to grab ...
I Am Not Your Austerity Measure or Your Entitlement Cut
I am a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a wife. I am not an austerity measure – in Greece or in any other nation. I am a caregiver. I am a worker. I am a patient. I am a taxpayer. I am not an entitlement cut or a medical loss ...
It’s a Haunting Time for the WC
It’s nearly fall again. That means if we make it through October and Halloween and early November, the holidays and all the expectations will be bearing down on us again. But, wait, those years are long gone. I failed to meet the expectations. I couldn’t keep a home for us. ...
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May 19th, 2013
Saturday Night Dead ---- Courtesy of the U.S. Health Care System
There are 123 fewer Americans watching and laughing at the 2013 season ender for Saturday Night Live tonight because they were killed by the U.S. health care ...
May 16th, 2013
Tornadoes, Suicide Bombs, and the U.S. Health Care Dead and Broke
The news today is grim, to be sure. Tornadoes in Texas with the dead and the missing, Roadside, suicide bombs in Afghanistan with U.S. casualties. ...
May 15th, 2013
Protecting Angelina's Honor as U.S. Health Care System Kills 123 People Daily
Yesterday I wrote about the recent revelations from Angelina Jolie about her double mastectomy. I said nothing ill-willed about the mega-star nor did I imply ...
May 14th, 2013
My Breasts and My Life Not as Valuable as Angelina's
While women and men around the world applaud Angelina Jolie for her bravery in writing such a public opinion piece in the New York Times today about her ...
May 11th, 2013
Thousands Dead in 2013 U.S. Health System Failure
Beginning tonight, I want to create the U.S. health care death toll count for all to see and read. These are the dead due to ...
May 10th, 2013
Selling Pain and Suffering to the Masses
From this point forward, as state health insurance exchanges begin to roll out their advertising and health insurance companies turn up the volume to advertise ...
May 3rd, 2013
Health Care Mayday! In Colorado – Leading Health Advocacy Group Calls for Action
It’s May. It’s American Bike Month, Asparagus Month, Asthma & Allergy Awareness Month, Better Hearing & Speech Month, Flower Month, National Bar-B-Que Month, National Egg ...
December 24th, 2009
A Patient’s View of the Senate Christmas Healthcare Gift
So, all the great fanfare and all the king’s horses. The great and almighty U.S. Senate has spoken. I will have to buy private health ...
July 15th, 2011
‘Let ‘Em Eat Peas’ Can Be the Modern Age Elitist Mantra
It has been a challenging week for many people. While our elected officials have been broadly reported to be at odds about exactly how to ...
August 15th, 2012
Dead Woman Working: American Dream Died Long Ago
It was a slow and torturous death, my American dream. And for millions of others, I am guessing it is the same. Nothing this current ...
October 21st, 2012
Dead Woman Working: Who is the Best Looking Candidate?
Several years ago, it made me angry when I heard a family member remark that she was voting for the candidate who she felt was ...
September 5th, 2011
Worker’s Ode to Labor Day 2011
Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.Work. Be grateful to be working. Work harder. Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get ...
January 11th, 2010
White House Believes “Liberal Angst” Over Healthcare Will Go Away
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide ...
May 14th, 2013
My Breasts and My Life Not as Valuable as Angelina's
While women and men around the world applaud Angelina Jolie for her bravery in writing such a public opinion piece in the New York Times today about her ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
Michael Moore on MSNBC with Michael Eric Dyson, 3/22/13
Michael Moore on Democracy Now!, 6/28/12
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 5/11/12
Michael Moore on MSNBC, Super Tuesday, 3/6/12
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
