I invite you to consider attending the PNHP WW monthly meeting on Wednesday, October 21, 7:30 - 9:00 PM, at the Swedish Cherry Hill campus, in the James Tower (same floor as the Jefferson St. entrance).
We have invited Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the Healthy Washington Coalition (HWC) to speak on how we might eventually achieve health care coverage for every Washington State resident, and she has kindly accepted.
The impetus of my invitation to her arose out of the recent HWC monthly meeting. As always at these meetings, several people representing various groups/organizations in the HWC reported on how they are making sure that their constituents achieve as thorough health care as possible. Many of their constituents are covered by Medicaid or other programs, for which access to affordable, timely, continuous, comprehensive, and high-quality health care is often iffy at best. I very much admire their commitment to this.
As I was returning home after the meeting, I was reminded so much of what is sometimes called "The Upstream Story;" I am sure that you will recognize it. In one iteration, two people are fishing in a stream, and a baby floats by in the water. One of them "rescues" it. Then soon another, and another, etc., float by and is rescued. Finally one of the fisherman turns to the other and declares, "We must go upstream to see why all of these babies are being thrown into the river, and stop that from occurring."
I'm by no means critical of the HWC people, but in essence that is what they are doing – rescuing their constituents without being able to prevent the predicament that those constituents are in.
In having Teresa speak to us, David McLanahan and I hope to be able to explore if and how we can recruit many of these constituent organizations to assist in getting to the root of the problems. Teresa has made it clear that she, in her role as chair of the HWC, cannot directly take that challenge on. However, our hope is that we can explore with her how we – PNHP WW, HCFA-WA, UfSP, etc. – can take on this challenge.
We certainly welcome any and all of you to join us on October 21.
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