What began in the pre-dawn dark in Albuquerque, NM ended in a sun-drenched garden in downtown Denver, CO before an inspired and vocal crowd of doctors, nurses, activists, teachers, and Coloradans demanding quality, affordable healthcare for all. CIR doctors had boarded vans in Albuquerque at 4 a.m. and drove the 7.5 hours up Route 25 to rally with their fellow SEIU members and lend their voices to the growing chorus demanding urgent action on healthcare reform.

The Healthcare Reform NOW rally in the Sunken Gardens featured music by Death Cab for Cutie, Chuck D of Public Enemy, and DeVotchKa, and speeches by Andy Stern of SEIU, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, National radio commentator, writer and public speaker Jim Hightower, and representatives from SEIU Local 105, Colorado for Healthcare, ACORN, Health Care for America NOW!, Healthcare United – and Dr. Elizabeth Burpee, Secretary-Treasurer of CIR and Chair of the Political Action Committee for CIR’s Executive Board.

Chuck D and Jim Hightower served as co-emcees of the afternoon and constantly reminded the crowd how grassroots activists have the power to demand change and accountability of our elected officials. Speaker after speaker stressed that it wasn’t enough to elect a president and a Congress friendly to healthcare reform – we needed to fight against the entrenched influence of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies to make quality, affordable healthcare a reality.

Since she had embarked on a 450 van ride just to be there, Dr. Burpee was an instant hit with the crowd. She urged them to work together to fix our broken healthcare system and stressed how important it is for doctors and other healthcare professionals to be engaged and hold their elected officials accountable. “We caregivers can make sure that healthcare reform gets done right, once and for all!” she said.

Dr. Burpee is no stranger to political action on behalf of better patient care. Over the past year, she and other CIR residents in New Mexico have met with Governor Bill Richardson and Lt. Governor Diane Denish to advocate for universal healthcare. In April, Senate candidate Tom Udall followed Dr. Burpee as part of SEIU’s “Walk a Day in My Shoes” program. Throughout the summer, she has been a driving force for Healthcare United in New Mexico – an organization formed to make the voices of frontline healthcare workers heard in the national healthcare debate. As Dr. Burpee explained to the crowd, “The bottom line for us in our work is the quality of care we can give to our patients.”

We made it inside the Denver City limits and, let me tell you, this city is PACKED. We’re winding our way to the Sunken Gardens, where a stage has been set up at 8th and Speer.

Our journey is over, but the day is just beginning!

There’s going to be a lot going on at this rally, with entertainers, music and speakers ranging from Andy Stern and Public Enemy's Chuck D to doctors and nurses -- including our own Dr. Elizabeth Burpee, Secretary-Treasurer of CIR.

I’ve asked Dr. Burpee for an advance look at her speech. I think it sums up well how committed we are to tackling the problems we discussed this morning, and providing quality, affordable healthcare for all!

We’re in the home stretch. We’ve analyzed the numbers, we’ve discussed the problems. Soon, it will be time to take action!

I go around the van quickly and ask people what the single biggest thing everyone is looking forward to when they get to the Denver rally.

“A lot of people are really excited about the possibility of change in our country around healthcare,” says Dr. Thompson, “and just to be there is going to be an awesome opportunity.”

For Dr. Modi, one part of the trip trumps the others: “Seeing Barack Obama’s acceptance speech -- I haven’t seen him yet, and I know a lot of people who have seen him speak. I just think it’s going to be really fun.”

The Arkansas River looks stunning, even from the highway, and it’s a big relief from the arid stretches of land we’ve been riding through. Pueblo is often called “Colorado’s Second City,” but it’s not because of population. At a little over 100,000 people, it’s currently the ninth most populous city in Colorado. But for a long time, it’s been the economic center of southern Colorado and northeast New Mexico, and is still a hub for the steel and aviation industries.

With only two hours to go to Denver, now’s a good time to take a quick look at the Colorado healthcare system. Unlike New Mexico, where 40% of the physician workforce practiced in rural areas, Colorado is much more stratified -- with a whopping 89% in urban and suburban areas and only 11% in rural areas. This makes some sense in terms of population distribution, since 85% of Coloradans live in cities and 15% live in rural areas. But it means rural physicians have a lot of ground to cover! They also have a lot more to do -- the largest portion of Coloradans who are over 65 live in rural areas.

Despite the concentration in cities, the inner-city communities are still considered underserved -- a problem for cities like Pueblo, where 13.9% of families and 17.8% of the population lives below the poverty line.

We’re rolling through Colorado City right now. Contrary to its name, Colorado City is an unincorporated town of just over 2,000 people.

Going back to Dr. Winters’ story, the Colorado Health Institute released a comprehensive profile of the “working uninsured” in Colorado in 2004. Given that most people get their insurance coverage from their employers, you might think that there would be stark differences in the profiles of the insured and uninsured.

What’s more striking about the numbers, however, is how similar the profiles of the insured and uninsured workers are. The percentage of uninsured workers who work full-time at least part of the year -- 78% -- is not much different than the percentage for insured workers -- 83%. The percentage of workers who only work part-time for part of the year is likewise similar -- 8.8% for the uninsured, 8% for the insured. And in terms of seniority, job security and experience in the workforce, there’s little difference -- at the time of the study, 84.2% of uninsured workers had the same employer for the previous year, and 86.9% of insured workers said the same.

So are there factors that help determine why one set of workers is likely to have health insurance while another is not?