Deborah Van Kleef: Home

Have you heard?

72% of Americans favor a public-funded and administered health insurance plan, to compete with the private for-profit plans, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published June 21, 2009.

So... Help Health Care for All GO VIRAL (so to speak)

• Watch me perform "Talking Health Care" (on an examining table, in a hospital gown). Click "Links"at left, and then "Talking Health Care." (See below for lyrics.)

• Pass it along:

Forward this URL to everyone on your email list: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq8v5Kj0rxU

Social networking site users, use those networks:

Under the "Talking Health Care" video image on YouTube (you can get to it from "Links" at left), choose Facebook or Myspace.

On Facebook, for example, click on "Post to Profile," then click "Share." You can write a message to your friends in the "What's on your mind" box.

• Buy "Talking Health Care" at iTunes (search on "Talking Health Care" at the iTunes site) and I'll donate my share to Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN), to help them carry on the fight. Click "Links" at left to find out more on health care reform at www.uhcan.org.

Spread the word, and join the campaign to provide affordable health coverage for every American. For the first time in decades it's a front burner issue. As citizens, we can tip the balance by getting involved now.

Talking Health Care

Woke up one morning, I was feeling sick

I called up the doctor to see me quick.

A voice on the phone said with no hesitation,

"If you've got insurance, you're our patient!"

I said, "It's just a sore throat, I'll pay the bill."

She said, "Well it'll be 90 bucks to look at your tonsils

And 150 to establish you as a patient."

So I called around to some companies,

And I said, "I'd like to buy some insurance, please."

They said, "We'll have to examine you first

To find out if you're an acceptable risk.

We've got to make sure you won't actually get sick.

You know insurance is for healthy people."

Well they analyzed my blood and my pee.

They scrutinized every inch of me,

Took the medical history of all my relations

Back about a dozen generations.

Then they said, "We've got to know one more thing:

Do you have any pre-existing conditions?"

"Just one," I said, "But it's terminal. It's called 'life'."

So they signed me up and told me the terms

For helping my body to fend off germs,

With a co-payment here, a deductible there,

And a sky-high premium for each month's care.

They said, "If you have to go to the hospital, don't worry.

We'll be right there looking over your doctor's shoulder!"

I was starting to see where the problem lay,

And why I was having to pay and pay.

I said "This isn't really about my health,

It's something to do with increasing your wealth."

They said, "What country do you think you're living in:

CUBA?!... Japan... England... New Zealand... Spain...

Germany... Iceland... France... Australia... Chile...

the Netherlands... Portugal... Sweden... Norway... Hungary...

Denmark...?"

The truth is, with those expectations you could be living

in any industrialized country in the world,

except for these United States, where there's

forty-seven million of us out here on our own.

Yes, health care ought to be guaranteed.

It's about our lives, not some middleman's greed;

And if we all get together and organize

We can have a new system -- get rid of those guys!

Yup, we'll have universal coverage,

Health care for people, not for profit...

Why, pretty soon we'll all be feeling so good

We'll think we died and went to - Canada!