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Tara Colon, Kensington Welfare Rights Union, PO Box 50678, Philadelphia, PA 19132, 215-681-0447, anne@kwru.org
Tara Colon, a formerly homeless mother and leader of the KWRU who is currently without health care for herself and her children will speak about the very real life and death situation in which millions of people in the US live without the right to health care. Even while our country has more than enough to go around, and while we have some of the best health care facilities in the world, millions go without and thousands die in this model of for-profit health care. She will talk about the deadly conditions faced by people with no heat, by those living in vacant lots in tent cities, by those without water and without other basic necessities in the richest country in the world. She will relate stories of families with AIDS forced to live (and die) in shacks on vacant lots in tent cities built by the KWRU, because they had no other place to go. All of these are examples of a system which daily assaults the lives and health of large numbers of people, in which fewer and fewer people have a right to health. If this model doesn't work, if people are dying from for-profit health care in the US, why would it work anywhere in the world, she asks if we are all suffering under privatization and similar models worldwide. The devastating human cost of for-profit, private health care models, both in the rich countries and in the third world (where privatization and IMF policies have made the health situation worse) is clear.
Learning Objectives:
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.