Debby Smith

Update 4: And they wonder why even Helen Thomas is asking questions? At the very least, she's been working with the administration for months. They let her go all this time without help? It had to fall to Obama today? That's nuts!

Update 3: Apparently she was moderating events in December of 2008:

Published: December 23, 2008 In line with President Obama’s health-care campaign and the new administration, he has directed Senator Tom Daschle to form a committee to report on health care issues important to those in Virginia. Debby Smith will be moderating the Southwest Virginia town-hall discussion in Appalachia at Town Hall on Dec. 30 at 7 p.m. According to Smith, the information from the meeting will be reported back to Daschle to be included in his report to the President. Congressman Rich Boucher and Daschle are scheduled to attend the meeting as well, barring schedule changes. News Channel 11 will be on the scene Tuesday night, look to tricities.com for more coverage.

Update2: Can't access the full article: scroll down.

There will be a community discussion on health care issues tonight at Appalachia Town Hall. The open forum begins at 7 p.m. and will be moderated by Debby Smith. According to Smith, information from the meeting will be reported back to Sen. Tom Daschle, who has been directed by President Elect Barack Obama to form a committee to report on health care issues.

Update: The article is from April, so this was no surprise.

Debby Smith is the Cancer patient Obama hugged today at his health care town hall. It at least appears that she would currently qualify for assistance but doesn't want it. That's assuming her income doesn't preclude it.

ABINGDON, Va. -- Debby Smith spent four years serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and 25 years working as an accountant before she found out she had cancer -- and now she can't get health insurance.

"Since ... I can't work, of course, I don't have health insurance, which means I have to pay out of pocket for ... all my prescriptions and all my doctor visits and everything, and if you don't work it's hard to do that," said Smith, 51, of Appalachia, Va.

"A lot of people, they think that people are just sitting around not doing any work just getting government assistance ... and don't try to do anything for themselves and ask the government to pay for everything," she said. "I'm not one of those people. ... I'd rather be working and doing my job and making a decent wage, but I'm not able to do that."

With 12 years to wait for age-related Social Security benefits, she relies on a hospital charity fund for twice-yearly cat scans; a pharmaceutical company's patient assistance program for help with her cancer drugs and her fiance, who pays $515 a month for her remaining medication and regular doctor visits.

She says she's lucky; those like her who have no loved ones to help can't get the care they need -- and, ultimately, they die.

Her horror at what she calls a broken health care system is what drove her to get involved in a growing regional and national effort to mobilize people on the need for comprehensive health care reform.

Comments

[chas]

"A lot of people, they think that people are just sitting around not doing any work just getting government assistance ... and don't try to do anything for themselves and ask the government to pay for everything," she said. "I'm not one of those people. ... I'd rather be working and doing my job and making a decent wage, but I'm not able to do that."

Doesn't she think a public health option is "government assistance" and if she's willing to take private charity then why not take the gov't help she qualifies for? she seems very contradictory in her positions.

[Lala]

Ultimately we all die.

But, the VA provides low-cost prescriptions.

Why can't she work? And, if she can't work, why isn't she on SSD which qualifies one for Medicare?

[Lala]

But John Davis, another person in the article, has a gall bladder infection and IS on SSD and Medicare. I call BS on this one.

[mark l.]

look's like the press has started teething.

they were loathing the idea of having to mention big numbers in expecting the stimulus.
the light is starting to come on for some of them, that their token apathy towards the admin and its initial need to drop a ton of cash on a financial crisis, is now being used to green light the admin's future debt-spending.

if the dems push cap and trade, they will have spent some essential capital in doing so. There will not be enough in the tank for health care. How long before the dots of increasing govt revenue with cap and trade are going to be connected as a means of paying for the healthcare that follows?

this 'no tax increase on families making less than 250k' is going to be like a giant zit on the messiah's face. The more he moves away from the promise of no increase in taxes, the bigger the zit gets.

[jeaneeinabottle]

She is lying. There is no way she would not be covered by medi-cal or by the vets hospital. This is so lame and this horrible press better start talking about it before it's to late. I hear about this mess all day long from Americans that are thoroughly pissed off. They call and write their reps and they get yelled at for calling. It's getting really bad here.

[Lala]

The gall bladder guy is lying too. It's a quick operation with a little scar. No way is he on SSD for that.

[Lala]

Ha Ha, swears he didn't know the question ahead of time =

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/023939.php

[AuntJ]

This is my neck of the woods. Very pro-labor, pro-government assistance area. Rick Boucher country. However, in the November election, majority of counties around here, went Republican. Funny how it was a "town hall" and she had to go all the way across the state for it. Maybe its just me but "town hall" to me means, local people in the town where the meeting is being held.
Here is another article from the Bristol Herald Courier (also pro-Dem):
http://www.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/appalachia_native_debby_smith_will_attend_health_care_town_hall/27797/

[Swen Swenson]

Debbie is too sick to work as an accountant but not so sick she can't volunteer her time to her favorite political causes? Why am I skeptical?

[Burlington]

Obama went to VA for a staged health care reform "town hall meeting". The highlight of that was Debbie Smith, who allegedly suffers from recurrent cancer and can't afford care. She told a story and got a hug from Obama.

This woman claims that she opted for radiation therapy over an operation for kidney cancer because of her obligation to care for an invalid parent. This was in the 1990's. This is pure B.S. Radiation therapy for renal cell CA is a palliative treatment ,only for inoperable renal cancer and would never be offered as an alternative therapy to nephrectomy for the reasons she states. (renal is Latin for kidney and nephros is Greek)

The probability that she survived this long with palliative radiation for kidney cancer is very very low if not impossible.

She has worked for the DNC at least since 12/23/08. She claims to have been in the U.S. Marine Corp for 4 years and why wouldn't she not qualify for Veteran's benefits??

I smell something bad!

[David Jackson]

I have been reading through some of the comments made about the lady from Appalachia with cancer who appeared at the town hall meeting with Obama. Today I feel embarrassed to be an American, where is their compassion? Are those people a plant by the Republican party? Let's see their picture are they skinny models? (I doubt it) Why didn't they look into her situation themselves before making their comments. (I did) She is in dire straights, she has cancer, and no one will help her. Wake up, get your heads out of the sand and look around, before you end up in a similar situation yourself with our broken health care system. She was not a so called plant, I have met her, talked to her and am presently trying to help her myself and am meeting dead ends. If ll those back woods negative Americans had their way we would all be out in the cold with out insurance or medical care to save a dollar or the repulican party. DJ a true concerned American with compassion....

[Ravid Gil]

Certainly, Hershaw Davis was a plant, in the ABC Obamathon, and clearly Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer were in on it. Firstly, his facebook page says he is a fan of Obama, who is listed as Davis's favorite politician. Davis very coherently framed one of the principle goals of the Obama health plan--to have less specialists in the system and more primary care physicians--by asking what the Administration can do to get more primary care professionals out there, so people won't have to use the emergency room for primary care.

Obviously this would save money for the new plan, because specialists get paid more. In his reply, Obama said it's harder for primary care doctors to repay their student loans because they make less money than specialists.

Then Gibson (The one who was so stern with Sarah Palin) carried the theme forward by asking how they can quickly accomplish this. (Wow! What a hardball!) Obama's answer, included the statement that they want more primary doctors and less specialists, because of the cost difference.

Then Gibson calls on Mary Vigil, a medical student who was one of 5 students present who had written letters to Obama. She was one of the few who had written she that will owe $300,000, so Gibson knew what she would answer when he asked about the debt she was running up.

Ravgil

Here's the rerlevant part of the exchange:

Hershaw Davis: Apparently, our patient load is increasing due to patients not having either insurance or primary care. & I want to ask what’s the Administration going to do to place primary care providers, physicians and nurse practitioners back in the community so the ER is not America’s source of primary care.

Gibson: …Any kind of new system needs to be built around primary care. And not all the specialists, with all of this, but primary physicians, who can then farm you out. So, how do we reorient the system very quickly to get better primary care, and more primary care?

Obama: ….But what we can do immediately is start changing some of the incentives around what it takes to become a family physician. Right now, if you want to go into medicine, it is much more lucrative for you to go into a specialty. Now we want terrific specialists and one of the great things about the American medical system is we have wonderful specialists uh, and they do extraordinary work. But, increasingly, medical students are having to make decisions based on the fact that they’re coming out with $200,000 worth of loans. And if they become a primary care physician, oftentimes they’re gonna make substantially less money and it’s gonna be much harder for them to repay their loans.

So what we’ve done in the Recovery Act, we started by seeing if we could provide additional incentives for people who wanted to go into primary care, some loan forgiveness programs—I think they’re gonna be very important—but what we’re also gonna have to do is start looking at Medicare reimbursements, Medicaid reimbursements, working with doctors, working with nurses to figure out how can we incentivize quality of care, a team approach to care, that will help raise and elevate the profile of family care physicians and nurses, as opposed to just the specialists who are typically gonna make more money, if they’re getting paid fee for service.

Gibson: Is Mary Vigil in the room? Mary Vigil, there you are. You’re a... you’re a medical student, right, coming out and how much debt will you—can we get a microphone to Mary? How much debt (Laughs). How much debt will you have?

Vigil: I’ll be in about $300,000 in medical education debt.

Gibson: And you would like to go into primary care?

Vigil: Definitely, that…that was my primary motivation in going into medical school.

Gibson: But you know you will be remunerated at a lesser level than a specialist.

Vigil: Yes.

Full transcript at: http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/tag/socialism/