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If Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, women -- at least some of those hailing from Greater Kansas City -- say they plan to hold his "feet to the fire" when it comes to implementing his proposed health-care plan.
And they also want to know how soon he'll do it, after he assumes office.
Approximately 75 women of varying ages and ethic backgrounds, and a handful of men, gathered Thursday at Penn Valley Community College to listen and discuss Obama's proposed health-care plan and its impact on women's health care.
Featured guest was Neera Tanden, economic policy adviser for Obama and former policy adviser for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Other panelists were Hilda Fuentes, CEO of Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center; Deborah Jantz, M.D., an obstetrician and gynocologist with the Midwest Women's Health Center; Cathy Jolly, Kansas City Councilwoman and co-chair of the Truman Medical Center Board of Health Committee; and Cathy Knotts, hospital administrator at Truman Medical Center. Michael Kadish, policy director for Missouri Campaign for Change served as moderator.
Tanden said Obama's proposed health-care plan is designed to lower costs, improve quality and cover every American. It will consist of a "pool" of private and public funding options where people can choose which plan best suits them.
"He will build on the health-care support we have and strengthen what's not working," she said.
The plan also will include a "generous" tax credit, more modernized technology, and focus on preventitive care and nutrition programs.
"We have a health-care system that won't pay for nutrition assistance but will pay if you need to have your foot amputated," Tanden said.
Obama's health-care initiative will be paid for by repealing President George Bush's income tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 a year, instead returning them to the 2000 tax rate.
However, Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, M.D., a physician at a health-care clinic in Kansas City, Kan., expressed dissatisfaction with Obama's plan. Huet-Vaughn was a former captain in the U.S. Army who refused to serve in the Gulf War because she was asked to administer experimental vaccines. She believed doing so violated her Hippocratic oath. She served eight months at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth."
"What I did not hear was a courageous change in paradigm," Huet-Vaugh told panelists. "From my perspective, the system is broken. It is a for-profit system. And unless we have a not-for-profit system, we won't have health care for everyone."
Huet-Vaughn said her own health-care insurance is so exhorbitant, that it is cheaper for her to travel to her family's home in Mexico for her mammograms and related care.
"And that's including air fare," she said. "All of us should have the same plan, that's my feeling."
Alice Kitchen, a former social worker who now volunteers with the Heartland affiliate of Healthcare-Now.org (www.healthcare-now.org), also supports a single-payer health-care system. A single-payer health-care system is one that would be administered by the federal government.
"More and more of the same isn't going to help,"Kitchen said. "It's everybody in, nobody out."
Kitchen also asked Tanden why Obama just couldn't support Congressman John Conyer's (D-Mich.) single-payer plan, instead of creating his own plan.
"I'm sorry to say, it's not the single-payer plan but he completely respects where Sen. Conyers is on this," Tanden responded, again emphasizing Obama's plan of choice.
Breast cancer care, and the importance of early detection, also were widely discussed.
Jolly shared her own struggle with fighting breast cancer, saying one in eight women in her lifetime will be diagnosed with this disease.
"I was lucky," she said. "I have insurance."
Jolly said she supports Obama's plan to double funding for the budgets for the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institutes, as well as funding for DNA matching and stem cell research.
Fuentes, too, said she recently was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
"I truly don't know how long I'm going to live," she said.
But one thing she said she does know, is the high cost of her care. As of July, Fuentes has used up all of her planned benefits and now must dip into her own pockets.
"And I'm employed and I make a good salary," she added.
Fuentes said only about 5 percent of the patients who come through the Samuel U. Rodgers clinic have insurance. She called health-care centers "the bellwether" of the health-care crisis in society.
"We need some kind of insurance coverage for everyone," she said. "It needs to be a basic right. This is not a benefit. People die every day because they don't have health care."
Jantz said women without insurance often are diagnosed with cancer too late and subsequently, face a much higher risk of dying. And accompanying this fear, she added, is one more overwhelming thought: "'How am I going to pay for this?"
Jackson County Legislator Theresa Garza Ruiz also spoke but not in her capacity as legislator but in her role as government relations director for the American Cancer Society. She asked that all forms of cancer care be equally well funded.
Women, Knotts said, also are major consumers of health care.
"Four out of 10 women have a chronic condition, and only 35 percent of men do."
In addition, she said one out of every four women experience depression or anxiety, which is twice the rate as men.
Following the panel discussion, Tanden said the Obama health-care plan will push for legislation to regulate the health insurance industry, as well as promote competition among companies to provide the best benefits to consumers.
"He's not driving out insurance companies but will regulate the way they do business," she stressed.
Tanden said health insurance companies spend $50 billion a year "cherry-picking" -- or trying to find ways not to pay for people's coverage.
"(Obama) will take away cost-shifting to drive costs down," she said, which will in turn, "level the playing field."
Tanden said large employers also stand to financially benefit from Obama's health-care policy because it will reduce their health insurance costs or "their bottom line."
With 47 million Americans without health care in this country, Tanden said the time is "very right" for mass support of universal health care.
"People are getting sick of a country as rich and as great as ours that doesn't have health care for everyone," she said. "We want to put consumers back into the driver's seat and protect the doctor/patient relationship."