Mt. Sterling physicians, Dr. Edward Roberts and Dr. Robert Toon, sponsored a September 12, 2023, showing of the documentary, “The Power to Heal,” at the Gateway Regional Arts Center in downtown Mt. Sterling. The film, narrated by Danny Glover, describes how the passage of Medicare in 1965 became the vehicle by which an active civil rights movement, in less than four months, transformed the nation’s hospitals from our most racially and economically segregated institutions into our most integrated.
Publicly funded Medicare not only brought care to our nation’s seniors but it ended segregation in hospitals with its insistence that only hospitals certified as in compliance with civil rights law could receive these funds.
Following the film, Paul Hoppe and Kay Tillow of Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care and Dr. Roberts engaged with the audience in a lively discussion entertaining the possibility that Medicare could once again be the basis of transformation to a more just health care system. A local doctor told of the privatized Medicare Advantage plans’ refusal to authorize payment for tests essential to care. Many signed the petition in support of the national, not-for-profit, single payer system–an Improved Medicare for All plan–advocated by Physicians for a National Health Program.
“The Power to Heal” is based on a book by David Barton Smith. Listen to the interview with David Barton Smith on Single Payer Radio.
Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care offers to show the hour long film to any organization that is interested. Please contact nursenpo@aol.com, 502 636 1551, to make arrangements.
Further information on the documentary can be found here.