Remarks by Dr. Rachel Kreps-Falk in San Francisco, CA

Rachel Kreps-Falk, MD is the CIR Regional Vice President for Northern California. She gave these remarks on July 8, 2008, as part of the "Health Care for America NOW!" kickoff outside City Hall in San Francisco, CA



My name is Rachel Kreps-Falk, and I am an executive vice president of CIR, the union that represents 13,000 resident physicians across the country. We are here today because our patients need access to healthcare NOW.

As a 3rd year resident physician at Children's Hospital in Oakland, I am on the front lines of providing healthcare for children in a system that is broken.

I see children come in for their 4th asthma admission of the year because their family cannot afford the medications that will keep their disease under control.

I see children who wait months for needed appointments with a specialist or for necessary mental health care because there are so few providers that accept their insurance.

I see children who are admitted for pneumonia and other infections who leave the hospital without filling their prescriptions for antibiotics because their family has to decide whether to pay for medicine or for groceries.

I see children using the Emergency Room for their basic healthcare needs because their insurance has lapsed, and they have nowhere else to go.

The majority of my patients are uninsured, underinsured, or receiving healthcare from state-sponsored health plans like MediCal and Healthy Families. As the state falls into a deeper and deeper fiscal crisis and funding for these vital programs is cut or lost, where are these patients going to go?

Fortunately fewer children fall through the cracks than do the adult members of our society. There are a number of programs that help pay for health insurance for this vulnerable young population who cannot speak for themselves. But what happens when these children become adults? In a time when up to 1 in 4 children suffers from asthma, and 30% of our youth are overweight or obese, will insurance companies deny them the health insurance they need because of "pre-existing conditions?"

And, you know, I am one of the lucky ones. I am fortunate to practice medicine in California, where there are leaders like Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi who believe in the urgency and necessity of providing quality, affordable healthcare for all people. However, we can not do it alone.

It is time for a national policy that provides quality, affordable, and accessible healthcare to all people so that our most valuable resource--our children--can grow up to be healthy and productive members of society.