Netroots Nation health panel: Nataline's mother, Murder By Spreadsheet & much more

If you can join us on Saturday, July 19. 10:30 - 11:45 - Ballroom G, a warning:  when it's over, you're going to be as angry as you've ever been. We're going to rattle your cages. You'll hear from people who won't shield you from the grim realities of our hopelessly broken healthcare system.

You'll also hear about what we, the netroots, will have to do going forward to get the authentic healthcare reform we so desperately need. If there's one take home message it's this, electing Obama is just the beginning.

You know me, I've been sounding the alarm for years, now  others who have been touched, or harmed, or professionally horrified by our healthcare system in one way or the other, will talk and bear witness.

To say I'm honored to be involved with making this happen is the understatement of all time.

Here's the line up.

1. Hilda Sarkisyan, yes, Nataline's mother. I've met this courageous woman. Her pain is raw, her anguish is  unbearable, yet she is determined to take this terrible tragedy and turn it into a means of exposing the terrible brutality of the for-profit health insurance industry.

2. Dr. Giuseppe Del Priore, New York cancer surgeon. Like so many of his colleagues, Dr. Del Priore is an angry doctor.  He wonders aloud whether the only solution to the unlawful behavior of the insurance industry is to file criminal complaints with the authorities in New York about insurers denying care to his critically ill patients.

Dr. Del Priore also stepped forward to write a blistering Op Ed for the Los Angeles Times called Moves From the Cigna Playbook, about the Sarkisyan tragedy.

Our third panelist is a prosecutor taking on the criminal health insurance industry. Some of us think this prosecutor might be the next governor of California.

An elected official actually doing the business of the people. Meet Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles City Attorney. Do yourself a favor and go to his web site. At the very top in big red letters you'll see, INVESTIGATION REGARDING DENIAL OF HEALTH INSURANCE CLAIMS OR COVERAGE. It's shocking, certainly for me, to see an elected official doing the work he was hired to perform.

3. Rocky Delgadillo, Los Angeles City Attorney.  The man who is taking on and taking down the insurance industry. If you don't know Rocky, you damn well should, like I said, he just may be the next governor of California.

Rocky recently launched a law enforcement investigation into unlawful and fraudulent business practices of the health insurance industry, particularly with respect to the improper denial of consumers' claims and post-claims rescission practices.

4. Geri Jenkins, RN, a trauma nurse and a Member of the Council of Presidents of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, America’s largest nurses’ union and the fastest-growing union of any kind.

I'm hoping Geri will discuss the melding of citizen activism and the netroots. How, for example, do we take it to the next level after Senator Obama is elected? And maybe she can tell us with all the talk of Obama moving to the center, what plans does CNA have up its sleeve to convince him and his advisors that the only remedy to this catastrophe is a single-payer system?

5. And the incomparable Ezra Klein. The man with the answers. And boy will we need answers when this crew gets finished.

Here's the blurb about the panel from the Netroots Nation Web site.

Will healthcare reform be delivered to the American people? Not if we sit by and don't take action. This panel brings together fierce advocates of healthcare reform. You'll meet Nataline Sarkisyan's mother, who turned her grief into action. A cancer surgeon struggling with a rising tide of insurance company denials.  A politician spearheading civil and criminal investigations into insurance industry practices.   A trauma nurse/activist. And a policy expert with answers.  

Please come with lots of questions.

Saturday, July 19. 10:30 - 11:45 - Ballroom G