Western Regional CIR Leaders Bridge the Health Care Reform Gap

On Saturday, August 29, 2009,about 50 CIR members from New Mexico, Los Angeles and Northern California came together in Oakland to receive advanced training in organizing and bargaining,share experiences from chapters around the region, and strategize about how to win health care reform this year.

“It was great to meet all the great people who are involved with CIR and inspiring to hear what they’ve been doing, said Dr. Nick Nelson, an Internal Medicine resident at Highland Hospital in Oakland. “My enthusiasm for CIR was renewed,both as an avenue for political activism and a means of collective bargaining.”

The weekend meeting also provided the delegates with a look inside the health care reform bills being debated in Congress. Anthony Wright, executive director of the California advocacy group Health Access, broke down the complicated proposals on the table, and explained how expanding coverage would affect doctors and patients in California and New Mexico, which have some of the highest rates of the uninsured.

After Wright’s keynote address,residents were fired up and ready to take action. They participated in the“Every Patient Matters” campaign through the Partnership for Quality Care by writing messages on paper“scrubs” to explain how our broken health care system has harmed their patients and urge reform. They also wrote “prescriptions for change” on an oversized tablet page.Many residents also taped video testimonials for Senator Dianne Feinstein, stressing their preference that a public health insurance option be part of reform.

In the afternoon, the discussion shifted to organizing and bargaining.Residents learned the steps to organize a new CIR chapter—a process many members are unfamiliar with since their hospital chapters were organized long ago. They broke into groups to act out different scenarios,from a meeting with residents who are resisting the union, to a meeting with a politician and his chief of staff to enlist their support for the organizing campaign.

The participants left Oakland with souvenir scrubs featuring a custom CIR logo with an image of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a renewed commitment to fighting for their patients and for a better health care system.