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Los Angeles Hospitalist and ACP Member Participates in California Healthcare Forum

Alice Chen, a hospitalist at UCLA and associate ACP member and Director of "Doctors for America," presented a brief talk at the California Healthcare Forum on April 6, 2009. The Webcast of that forum is archived on Governor Schwarzenegger's Web page at http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/11939/. Doctors for America has been working closely with the Obama administration on a 100-day plan to support healthcare reform this year and earlier this year, the organization sent a letter to Congress signed by 2,000 physicians and medical students requesting that Congress to keep the "healthcare reserve" in the federal budget.

The following is a brief report prepared by Dr. Chen summarizing the information she presented at the California Healthcare Forum. Dr. Chen’s email is atychen@gmail.com if you would like to contact her directly. The Web page for her organization is www.drsforamerica.org.

On Thursday, April 2, I received an unexpected call from Tim Granholm at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I had been chosen to give an opening statement at the White House Regional Health Forum in Los Angeles on April 6. He explained to me that the sequence of opening speakers would be as follows: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, Melody Barnes (Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council) . . . and me.

When I arrived at the forum, I was escorted to my seat just a few feet away from where the governors would be. Only 200 people were invited to the event, and the room was full of important stakeholders from industry to nonprofits to government officials. The room buzzed with anticipation.

At 10:30 a.m., the governors and Melody Barnes entered and the forum began. I was struck by how earnest and passionate the governors were about health care reform. A taped video message from the President and some welcoming remarks from Melody Barnes brought an added sense of national attention to the event. Then I was handed the microphone.

I told the story of my patient with longstanding Crohn's disease who was lost to follow up because he lost his health insurance. By the time he made it to the county hospital ER, he had kwashiorkor. Within days of admission, he became septic and died. The tragedy of his premature death felt so much worse to me because of the senseless injustice of it, and it felt good to be able to tell the world about it. As I spoke, I looked into the eyes of people around the room and found that no barrier of rank or celebrity separated us. We were all in this together.

Through the course of the next two hours, we heard from people from every sector. Family members of patients put more human faces on tragedies wrought by the problems in our health care system. The CEO of Safeway described how his company cut health care costs by incentivizing healthy lifestyles and achievement of chronic disease treatment targets. Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund passionately argued that bringing health care to all children is not a negotiable goal. Another woman described a nonprofit that she leads that trains college students to teach high school students about healthy lifestyles. It was an uplifting and thought-provoking experience to find that such a diverse group of people are all working in their own ways toward the same goal.

Afterward, various people and news outlets came to speak with me. During my remarks, I had also mentioned that I am part of the leadership of Doctors for America. We are a grassroots organization of over 10,000 physicians and medical students focused on bringing the experiences and voices of physicians to Congress and to the public to make sure we do not miss the opportunity we as a nation have right now to fix our health care system. The attention I got after the forum confirmed for me the power and responsibility that we as physicians have to oppose the naysayers and lobbyists who champion the broken status quo.

Getting engaged in health reform through events like the White House Forum and through organizations like ACP and Doctors for America, I feel that when my patients tell me of their frustrations with the health care system, I finally have a better response than that of a fellow victim: "Yes, the system is bad. Tell me about it." Now, I can look my patients in the eye and say, "Yes, that's why we're fighting to fix the system." It's a cautiously satisfying feeling, and I hope that one day soon, I will be able to tell those patients that we succeeded.

Dr. Chen’s can be reached at atychen@gmail.com if you would like to contact her directly. The Doctors for America Web site can be found at www.drsforamerica.org.


Page updated: 06-16-09

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