Location: Huntsville/Madison County Public Library, 901 Monroe Street

Description: Our Monthly Meeting – We meet in Room AB on the first flour.

More info: Email info AT NorthAlabamaHealthCareForAll.org

All meetings are at the library on the 1st Monday of each month. Everyone is welcome.

REMINDER!North Alabama Healthcare for All — Monthly Meeting Monday, December 6th @ 5:30pmHuntsville/Madison County Public Library, 901 Monroe Street (downtown)
The meeting is in room AB, on the first floor.  After you enter the library’s front door, turn right towards the auditorium.
There will be an abbreviated business meeting followed by an open round-table discussion. The topic of discussion will be ”The Loopholes & Fine Print in Your Healthcare Policy” – Prior to the meeting, we ask you to review the coverage details in your own healthcare policy and bring it to the meeting. We will discuss what is/isn’t
covered. Are you covered as well as you thought you were? Are you
under-insured? Can you even figure out what you coverage is? Should make
for and interesting, lively, and informative conversation

Come join us, share your ideas, and generally enjoy the company of other advocates for Medicare for All.
See you Monday at 5:30 p.m.!
Thanks,Rob Kilpatrick

This annual award, given out since 1996, is named for Quentin Young, MD who is the National Coordinator of PNHP and the father of the current movement for single payer national health insurance in the U.S.  He is also known as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal physician in Chicago, Illinois.

“Dr. Abston’s leadership in promoting single payer, Medicare for All, health reform to physicians, community groups, and the faith community in Alabama is exemplary and in the tradition of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who stated in 1966 that ‘of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman,’  said Dr. Quentin Young. “Dr. Abston is a leader among the younger generation of physicians working to make the U.S. health system accessible and affordable to all.”

ABOUT PIPPA ABSTON, MD, PhD, FAAP

Dr. Pippa Abston is the volunteer Physician Coordinator for North Alabama Healthcare for All, a chapter of PNHP.  In addition to her work as a pediatrician and educator, she has advocated for health care reform in public speaking events and other PNHP activities.  She was a speaker at Baylor University’s “Human Dignity and the Future of Healthcare” symposium in October 2010.  After the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010, she began reading the full text of the 2,400 page law and writing about her findings in her blog, www.pippaabston.wordpress.com.

Dr. Abston is a founding member of the Society for Equity in Child Health and serves on the Board of Trustees for the Madison County Medical Society. She is also a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. Dr. Abston received her medical degree from the University of South Alabama in 1993, where she also earned a national medical student award.  Her community work includes serving as a Deacon and Chairperson of Health Ministry at her church. She also received an award from Interfaith Mission Service in 2007 for her instrumental work in founding a local homeless clinic. Another of her recent accomplishments was establishing an Autism Diagnostic Clinic in Huntsville.

ABOUT QUENTIN YOUNG, MD

Dr. Young was active in the movement to desegregate Chicago hospitals and in the civil rights group, the Medical Committee for Human Rights.  He was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s physician in Chicago.  He was in practice in internal medicine for over 60 years, including a decade as chair of the department of medicine of Cook County Hospital, the safety net hospital for the Chicago region.  From marching in the 1960′s with Martin Luther King to his current position with PNHP and his column on the Huffington Post, Dr. Young’s dedication to social justice is an inspiration to all.

Originally posted on PNHP Friday October 22, 2010 re-posted here with permission.

When I was handed the microphone at a recent town hall meeting, I asked Sen. Jeff Sessions if medical treatment should be the right of every U.S. citizen. The crowd roared “No!” The senator agreed.

This got me thinking about what we mean by “rights.”

One lady called out, “We only have the three rights guaranteed in the Constitution: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about health care!”

Never mind the fact that life, liberty, etc., are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. She had launched me on a quest.

A cascade of “rights” flooded my mind. The right to vote, speak freely, choose your own religion, express grievances against the government, decline to testify against yourself, or the right to due process before giving up your property or liberty — all these are granted by the Constitution and its amendments.

But many of our rights are not declared in the Constitution. Supreme Court decisions, like the 1954 ruling that banned racial segregation in schools, bind the entire country with the same force as constitutional provisions. Laws enacted by Congress and signed by the president similarly confer rights with nationwide effect. Other rights are granted by actions of state, county or city governments and affect smaller groups of people.

American children’s right to a free public education is an interesting example. The Constitution makes no mention of any such right. Congress has passed no law mandating it. The Supreme Court has never ruled that our government has to pay for all American kids to attend grades K-12 tuition-free.

This vital matter is left entirely up to the individual states. Laws on schooling differ from state to state. Rules about teacher qualifications, classroom hours and curriculum can change whenever you cross a state line. Shockingly, for example, Alabama’s constitution still mandates separate schools “for white and colored children,” though the law is not enforced and would certainly be unconstitutional if tested.

We usually think of a right as something we can choose to do or not, as we please. “You have the right to remain silent” when arrested, yet you’re free to discuss your case with police if you choose. But consider the difference between the right to education and, say, the right to vote. Voting is considered a sacred right, with elections paid for by government, not the voter. Still the choice is yours: nobody is forced to vote or punished for staying home on Election Day. Sending your children to school, on the other hand, is not only your right but your legal obligation. If your kids don’t go to school, you the parent can go to jail.

This loops me back into whether medical care is, or should be, a right. How weird would it be if parents had to see to it that their children were in school, but no such thing as free, public, universal education existed? Parents unable to afford private school tuition could face criminal charges. I argue that the lack of universal, affordable medical care puts American citizens in a similar bind.

Medical neglect — failure to provide necessary medical treatment for one’s injured or ill child — is legally defined as a form of child abuse, with penalties ranging from loss of custody of the child to imprisonment of the parent. This puts families without health insurance or money to buy medications at greater risk of these punishments than the wealthy. Doesn’t that violate our Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of “equal protection of the law”?

If you can’t go that far with me, consider at least this from veteran journalist Christopher Dickey: “[G]overnments spend money to acquire assets. That includes bridges and nuclear reactors, but also hard-to-price, intangible assets like a well-educated and healthy population.” (My emphasis.)

I hold that to be a self-evident truth.

Alice A. Chenault, M.D., is a psychiatrist in Huntsville, Ala., and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org).

Location: Huntsville/Madison County Public Library, 901 Monroe Street

Description: Our Monthly Meeting – We meet in Room AB on the first flour.

More info: Email info AT NorthAlabamaHealthCareForAll.org

All meetings are at the library on the 1st Monday of each month. Everyone is welcome.

Title: NAHA Monthly Meeting

Location: Huntsville/Madison County Public Library, 901 Monroe Street

Description: Our Monthly Meeting – We meet in Room AB on the first flour.

More info: Email info AT NorthAlabamaHealthCareForAll.org

NAHA Monthly Meeting — Monday, August 2 , 2010  @ 5:30 PM

Huntsville/Madison County Public Library, 901 Monroe Street  (downtown)

The meeting is in Room AB, on the first floor. After you enter the library’s front door, turn right towards the auditorium.