Mike Penprase
News-Leader (Springfield, MO)
May 31, 2009
Dr. Judy Dasovich got national attention with her arrest during a recent Senate hearing in Washington, but she was more intent at a Saturday rally on getting attention paid to others.
Go talk to the family who had a mountain of medical bills that wasn’t covered by their insurance, the volunteer physician at The Kitchen told reporters during a “High Noon for National Health Care” rally.
The rally might have been impromptu and involved fewer than two dozen people, but Dasovich said she was pleased.
“We started organizing this in the middle of the week,” she said.
The Physicians for a National Health Program that Dasovich belongs to and other groups have advocated adoption of a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system, but Dasovich said she tells the curious there’s a simpler explanation.
Americans should pay for health insurance like they pay for interstate highways, she said.
Money that now goes for insurance premiums and co-payments should go to a nationwide tax that would support a health insurance system, she contends.
Instead of health insurance premiums going to insurance company profits and outright waste, the money would go for treating people, she said.
Dasovich said critics who contend such a system would be socialized medicine are mistaken because reform she wants to see would change the way money is spent and wouldn’t affect how doctors treat patients or how patients select doctors.
Anyone who has fought an insurance company over a bill or who has been forced to move from one physician to another because an employer changed health care coverage would understand, she said.
Her stance — and her trip to Washington that resulted in a misdemeanor arrest — didn’t come after one case of seeing someone needing health care who didn’t have insurance, she said.
Along with several other health insurance reform advocates, Dasovich was held for several hours after they demonstrated during a session of the Senate Finance Committee headed by Sen. Max Baucus.
“Charity care is not a solution,” she said. “I’ve seen that firsthand. This is the next step that needs to be taken.”
People attending the rally said they appreciate Dasovich’s commitment to reform.
“She’s wonderful,” Vicki Chapman said while holding baby daughter Kylie. “Judy is Kylie’s hero.”
As for her Washington arrest, Dasovich said she’s ready to deal with that soon.
Dasovich said she’s scheduled to return to Washington to respond the misdemeanor charge next week and expects a hearing to be held in another month.