Forum moderated by Between The Lines/WPKN Radio producers Scott Harris, Melinda Tuhus and Denise Manzari.

"Health Care: Basic Human Right or Privilege?"
Click here for a flyer of this event

• 2 to 4 p.m. Public forum and booksigning
  United Church on the Green, 270 Temple St., New Haven, CT
  (Suggested donation: $10, students $5 with ID)
  Please call (203) 268-8446 for reservations for preferred seating.
• 4-5 p.m. Reception with appetizers, wine, beer, beverages
  at United Church on the Green Reception Hall, New Haven, CT
  Tickets: $35 per person. Please call (203) 268-8446 ext. 3 to RSVP for the reception.

  Directions and parking
  Directions to United Church on the Green. Free parking at Yale Parking Lot 51 across from the New Haven Public Library available on weekends.

Help us spread the word!

Click here to download a color flyer.
Click here for a black and white flyer.
Listen to a radio promo about the forum in MP3.

This forum is cosponsored by:

• Connecticut Health Foundation
• Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut. To join the Campaign for Quality, Affordable Health Care, visit www.healthcare4every1.org
  
• The New Haven Advocate and Fairfield Weekly

Additional information
Click here for more information on the day's schedule
Click here for more information on advance reservations/reception
Click here for directions and parking for United Church on the Green
Click here for press release
Click here for more information on our speakers
Click here for more healthcare facts
Click here for more healthcare risks

• 1-1:30 p.m. Press interviews
• 1:30 p.m. - Doors open, networking, book and product sales, tabling in church lobby. All tickets can be paid at the door, cash or check made payable to The Global Center
  There will be a line for advance reservations. Please note: Advance reservations for preferred seating can only be held until 10 minutes before the program begins if we have an unexpected overflow crowd.
• 2 to 3:30 p.m. - Speeches by panelists
• 3:30-4 p.m. - Q&A
• 3:30-4 p.m.- Networking, product sales in church lobby
• 4-5 p.m. - Reception with Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler and John Wilhelm, community panelists, Between The Lines producers, friends and members of the community. You're invited! Appetizers, wine and drinks will be served.

Advance reservations for the forum
All forum tickets can be paid at the door, cash or check made payable to The Global Center
There will be a line for advance reservations. Please note: Advance reservations for preferred seating can only be held until 10 minutes before the program begins if we have an unexpected overflow crowd.

Reception
United Church on the Green Reception Hall
270 Temple St.,
New Haven, CT

About Our Speakers

Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler advocates guaranteed access to health care for all members of society, including the forty-two million Americans currently without medical insurance. In 1986 she helped found Physicians for a National Health Program, a not-for-profit organization for physicians, medical students, and other health care professionals who advocate a national health insurance program.

Stephanie Woolhandler was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1951 and earned her bachelor's degree at Stanford University in California in 1975. She graduate with her doctor of medicine degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine in 1979. She returned to the West Coast for her internship and residency at the University of California-San Francisco, and earned her master's degree in public health at the University of California-Berkeley. In 1983 Dr. Woolhandler moved to Massachusetts and began a medical residency at The Cambridge Hospital, where she served as the National Health Services Research Fellow in general internal medicine from 1986 to 1987. During this time she credits Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, chief of medicine, with helping her develop a vision of how she could combine her social activism with a medical career.

Dr. Woolhandler originally envisioned a life of service to the poor where she would be providing hands-on care. Explaining her choice of medicine as a career she recalled, "After several years of working in the movement against the Vietnam War, I sought a career that would allow me to continue my work for social change. I also loved math and science. Medicine was a career that allowed me to combine both my interests...I could reach a large audience for progressive ideas by publishing in medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the JAMA."

On the Harvard faculty since 1987, Dr. Woolhandler has conducted research and published her results in dozens of articles, chapters, and books, including Bleeding the Patient:The Consequences of Corporate Health Care, published in 2000. Studying the inequalities in health and health care, administrative costs in medicine, and national health insurance, she promotes a national health program with a single payer system. Towards that end, she helped found Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) in 1986, a not-for-profit organization of physicians, medical students, and other health care professionals who support a national health insurance program. Since that time, PNHP has flourished and now numbers about 10,000 physicians who support national non-profit health insurance.

Still providing patient care as an attending physician at The Cambridge Hospital, Dr. Woolhandler also serves as chair of the academic promotions committee. At Harvard she serves as co-director of the school's general internal medicine fellowship program. Numerous honors and awards have recognized her contributions to health care. In 1990 she was the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow for the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. In 1994 she received the Edward K. Barsky Award from the Physicians Forum and in 1996 the Ethical Culture Society named her "Humanist of the Year."

Says Dr. Woolhandler: "I originally envisioned a career of service to the poor, in which I would be providing hands-on care to the underserved. I later realized that I could reach a large audience for progressive ideas by publishing in medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the JAMA. My focus shifted to written scholarship, though I have continued to practice clinical medicine part-time. Over the past decade, I have worked on training younger researchers in techniques and strategies of scholarship for social change."

John Wilhelm started work with Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union in 1969 as an organizer and business agent in New Haven, Connecticut, where he had graduated with high honors from Yale College two years earlier.

He has established a reputation as an innovative union leader. His career has been characterized by creative organizing and corporate strategies; a strong commitment to rank and file member participation, reaching out to workers across ethnic and language barriers; and building positive, mutually beneficial relationships with employers. He has negotiated many excellent collective bargaining agreements on behalf of HERE members, and has a history of tenacity when conflicts have arisen with employers.

Mr. Wilhelm has led city-wide hotel industry negotiations in San Francisco, Boston (twice), Los Angeles (twice), and Las Vegas (four times), as well as several rounds of negotiations for the non-faculty employees of Yale University, and scores of other contract negotiations.

In the early 1980's, he led the organization into HERE of 2,650 clerical and technical employees at Yale. The successful 1984 strike for their first contract was a nationally known struggle for economic equality for working women.

From 1987 to 1998, Mr. Wilhelm led HERE's highly successful rebuilding in Las Vegas. Partnering with newly elected Local Union leadership, he directed a campaign that has become a national model.

After Mr. Wilhelm was elected President, HERE became the first Union in the modern era to be released from government supervision, when the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Court entered a Final Order of Dismissal in the Union 's Federal consent decree.

During his presidency, HERE furthered its reputation as an organizing Union, and achieved net growth after more than 25 years of membership decline. The Union also substantially diversified its national leadership, including election in 2001 of the Union 's first women General Officers, its first General Officer of color, its first Asian-American Vice President, significant increases in the number of African-American, Latino, and women Vice Presidents, and its first elected Canadian Director.

Mr. Wilhelm joined with UNITE President Bruce Raynor to lead the creation of a new Union, UNITE HERE, in 2004, creating a larger, stronger Union of 440,000 members, bringing together two of the most dynamic and progressive Unions in the North American labor movement.

Some things you should know about health care
From the report: "The Real Cost of Living and Getting Healthcare in Connecticut: The Health Economic Sufficiency Standard"

Access to employer-sponsored health insurance is the primary factor in family health costs and losses, and economic security.

Family illness, even short-term ones can cause serious risk or setbacks to family financial security. The costs include health care expenses and income losses incurred due to caregiving.

Employer-sponsored health insurance covers 62% of Connecticut residents and accounts for 45% of health care costs. But 25% of the state's population relies on public programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. Another 3% purchase individual coverage, often at high cost and 11% are uninsured.

Shortly after World War II, employer-sponsored insurance made up 5% of gross domestic product, today it is nearly 15%.

Health costs consume a growing portion of family incomes. Since 2000, the average commercial CT health plan rose 56% while wages only increased by 14%. In 2000, the state spent nearly $5,000 per person on health care annually -- 24% higher than the US average. CT is the sixth most expensive state in the U.S. for family coverage and 12th highest for individual coverage

Connecticut Office of Health Care Access found that 39% of the state's firms with 300 or fewer employees have no employer-sponsored health insurance coverage

Growing financial risks to families with health insurance
From the report: "The Real Cost of Living and Getting Healthcare in Connecticut: The Health Economic Sufficiency Standard"

Even when families have working adults with access to employer-sponsored health insurance, they bear significant costs: insurance premiums; out-of-pocket expenses for services not covered; lost earnings due to illness.

A 'typical' healthy, insured family of four in Connecticut requires $55,876 annually to maintain health and prevent acute illnesses from overwhelming its budget.

Mounting health care costs and medical debt put families' economic security at risk because such costs, whether for premiums or out-of-pocket medical expenses, or both, compromise other financial obligations. Recent study by the commonwealth Foundation found that one in five adults under age 65 is currently paying of debt from medical bills.

Women make up 56% of those who file for bankruptcy due to medical debts. The typical medical debtor is a 42-year-old college-educated mother who owns or did own a home.

Half of all families filing for bankruptcy cite medical debt as the cause. Out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since the start of an illness, and the vast majority -- over 75% had health insurance at the onset of the illness.

The "Health Care: Basic Human Right or Privilege?" forum, sponsored by Squeaky Wheel Productions, nonprofit distributors of the syndicated "Between The Lines" radio newsmagazine, will also feature the program's producers Scott Harris, Melinda Tuhus and Denise Manzari. Special thank yous to Universal Health Care Foundation, Connecticut Health Foundation, The New Haven Advocate, Fairfield Weekly, United Church on the Green, Rusty Hamilton and Marjolaine's bakery.

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