5.5 - Taking Action

After finishing her medical residency years ago, Dr. Richter worked in the inner city helping low income patients, but after six months she realized she could help more patients by working to reform health coverage in order to stop the medical crisis at the source. This decision came to her as she dealt with big issues, like the unnecessary deaths of her patients, and with the smaller issues, such as, “I would prescribe medicine. Then the patient would come back six months later and still not be better because they couldn’t afford to fill their prescriptions.”

So she started working part-time as a doctor and part-time as an advocate. Dr. Richter’s resolve was strengthened as she compared her experiences with doctors in other countries. Once, when speaking in Canada where for more than three decades all citizens have been covered through a single-payer health plan (a system where the government pays the healthcare costs of citizens to independent, privately run hospitals, doctors, and other health services), she shared a story about how one of her uninsured patients died due to lack of care. “People in Canada asked, ‘Did the newspapers cover it?’ ” Dr. Richter responded, “No, this was just one case of dozens and dozens I saw in my practice alone. Think about this magnified across our country.”

As medical costs and the number of uninsured rise at an alarming rate, people are becoming ever more aware of America’s healthcare crisis. “The current patchwork system we have isn’t working,” notes Buist. “We’re trying to move toward a world in which children have access to all the advantages that we can easily give them if we just had good policy.” Buist joins Dr. Richter and others who are educating policy makers and organizing communities around the country to demand the good health policies our children deserve. “The fight we’re fighting now,” says Buist, “is to make sure all children have healthcare coverage. How you get there is the question.”