We all know that something close to 50 million people in America lack health insurance. We know that at least that many are "underinsured" - covered by insurance that they can't afford to use or that fails them when they need it most. And many of us have heard of the statistic that around 20,000 die each year unnecessarily because they lack coverage. But those are all just numbers. I'm a Registered Nurse. When I see those numbers, I see faces. I see lives lost and lives changed. I want to help you see a little bit of what I see. My union - the California Nurses Assn./National Nurses Organizing Committee - has a website called Guaranteed Healthcare. It's part of our ongoing advocacy for healing America's healthcare "system". There's lots of interesting stuff there, but today I would call your attention to one section in particular. On the site, it's headed: "Real People Denied Real Healthcare". There are some videos of different people telling their healthcare horror stories. A few of them, like Nataline Sarkisyan, have become well known stories. But there's another group of stories there of people who are not well known.

Click on the link "Read Text Stories" and you find page after page of the personal stories of people damaged by lack of insurance, by insurance denial, by the ruinous cost of coverage. Most any of them will break your heart.

But scattered among those stories are the stories sent in by the friends and relatives of the lost. These tell the stories of those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that health insurance executives could have their gold-plated severance packages. Those of the many who laid down their lives, to preserve the wealth of the few. Who gave of themselves that our Senators might be secure in their campaign contributions from the insurance industry. I want to offer a random selection of those for your contemplation on this Memorial Day.

Here's one that's not too unusual in this richest of countries, with the "best health care in the world":

My sister-in-law died not of cancer, but of lack of insurance. For months, despite her weight loss, her vomiting, her constant pain, not one medical professional suggested further testing as Frances did not have health insurance. My brother worked a $10/hr job out of state, coming home on weekends. No testing was done until about 7 months into the ordeal when someone suggested checking her gall bladder. That was the extent of the testing, with the possible exception of some serum chemistries. It wasn't until she collapsed one weekend and was taken to the hospital that any significant testing was done. Of course, by then the cancer had spread throughout her entire abdomen. An exploratory (complete with 32 biopsies) confirmed what the ultrasound suggested. It was not until after this that anyone found a source of funds other than the sliding fee scale at the local clinic. Even then, health care in America failed her. With my brother having to work out of state, she lived at home, doing all her meds/IV feeding and documentation by herself with a home nurse coming once a week. This, by a high school graduate with no medical training whatsoever. The moral of this story? Don't get sick in rural America if you don't have health insurance. Referrals to specialists are out. Specialized medical tests are out. The only thing in is death and suffering.

Here's a shorter one. Not a lot of detail, but the essentials are there:

My best friend Bruce had a splitting headache for three days. Not being able to afford a visit for a check-up, he toughed it out, thinking it was probably the flu coming on. To keep his wife from catching it, he slept in his work room. His dog found him the next morning and went whining to his wife who found him dead in bed.

Those who are crafting health care "reform" in Washington are focused on getting more people covered by insurance. But if you've been around here a while, you know that having insurance does not mean always being able to get the care you need:

I had a good friend in New Mexico who developed a brain tumor. On her doctor's recommendation,she flew to San Francisco where gamma knife surgery was being done regularly at the University of California San Francsco medical center. She was told that the procedure could get the whole tumor but she had to act within three months or the growth would be too invasive. Her health insurance denied her the surgery claiming it was "experimental". By the time I found out about my friend's condition, she was desperate but resigned to her fate. I urged her to contact the NM Commissioner of Insurance whose office is famous for "encouraging" insurance companies to cooperate. She did that and the commissioner made the call. The company agreed to pay for the surgery but it was, you guessed it, too late. My friend, whom the New Mexico Navajo and Pueblo people would call a valuable person, was lost.

I've got a bunch of these, but let's see if I can pick just one more - don't want to lose your attention here. How about this one:

After my husband lost his job of 13 years due to outsourcing, we had to move from California back to Arizona. Our daughter, Elizabeth, decided to stay in California. Although her employers had promised to look into employee health insurance, they had not done so yet, so we told her whenever she had to go to the doctor to just go and we would pay for it. We had been sending a payment to the doctor every month, trying to stay ahead of her health needs, while paying hundreds every month to an insurance company for a policy for us. Some months later, Elizabeth said she'd been awfully tired, but attributed it to a recent move, long hours at work and her cat, Bert, who woke her up sometimes. I told her she ought to go to the doctor, but she didn't want to cost us if she didn't have to. I made her promise to go if she didn't feel better soon. I look back now and wish I could have seen her in person; perhaps I would have known something was really wrong and I would have taken her to the doctor right away. Days later, my husband and I were ready to head back to Arizona from an optical convention in Las Vegas, we stopped to call our son, who was watching the house; he told us Elizabeth had been taken to hospital. We called the hospital; they told us we ought to get there as quickly as we could. We knew it was serious and we diverted to California. Elizabeth apparently had an undiagnosed heart condition. She never regained consciousness. Surrounded by all her brothers, brothers-in-law, her sister, niece, and many, many friends, my beautiful Elizabeth died two days later -- the day after her 26th birthday. Bert now lives with us.

It's a nice day outside and I think that's about as much thought of death as I can handle for one day. But if you feel moved a bit by these stories, please consider taking action. Some of my friends and fellow nurses took action and got themselves arrested for "disrupting congress", but you don't have to go that far.

Please just write or call your senator or representative. And if you can, please participate in the National Day of Action for single-payer healthcare. It's coming up in just a few days in a city near you.

Educate yourself by reading and learning more here or here or here

And most of all, don't sit down and shut up; don't accept the conventional wisdom about what is possible. None of the great social movements of history were reaching for attainable goals. When Gandhi set out to win freedom for India, when women set out to win the vote, when the abolitionists set out to free the slaves, none of those were attainable goals. But they were all accomplished in the end, because people who knew what was right refused to sit down and shut up.

Update: At the suggestion of a commentor, I wanted to let you know that the SEIU ad immediately below is part of the site's paid advertising program and has no connection to this diary.