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This weekend we had the Emory International Medical Volunteerism Conference here in Atlanta, GA. George Lundberg MD was the keynote speaker and there were sessions on volunteering in third world countries, advocacy for patient rights and a range of other topics.
Lindsay Jones, the attorney who took on the case of the Grady Hospital dialysis patients who got yanked off dialysis with a certain death sentence, talked about advocating for the uninsured (See “Grady Hospital Tells Dialysis Patients to Leave or Die” and my posts from the court room “These are Real People” and “Healthcare is a Right“). Well, at least it is a right in most of the world, but not in the US, I guess, where a convicted mass murderer at least has the chance to have his day in court before they take his life away, unlike the unisured in this country, who get yanked off of dialysis with no due process. The Europeans who joined the Grady facebook page (see links in my prior posts, we got a couple hundred members) thought we were complete barbarians for acting like that.
Lindsay made the point he argued in court that healthcare is a right, and that you can’t deprive a person of their life without due process.
Lindsay Jones
The Grady patients are currently getting dialysis with the private treatment program Fresenius until September of this year.
I gave a lecture about advocating for victims of medication related problems along with other members of the Grady Coalition who banded together to advocate for the dialysis patients who had no voice, and were being deprived of life as victims of the corporate medical model where sickness is viewed as a way to make money and making profits is put ahead of people’s lives.
Isn’t it great to live in America!
EIMVC panel on advocating for the uninsured. L to R John Shippee (Cancer Patient Advocate), James W Reed, MD (Professor at Morehouse School of Medicine, Chief of Endocrinology, Grady Hospital), Vincent Fort (Georgia State Senator), Bonnie Hillsberg, (Vice-President, Association of Clinicians for the Underserved), Tim McDonald (Reverend, First Iconium Baptist Church), Pamela James Aliniece, (Founder, Laughing at Leukemia), Doug Bremner MD
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