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North Alabama Healthcare for All
Website: www.NorthAlabamaHealthcareForAll.org
Media Contacts
Pippa Abston, M.D., Ph.D
Physician coordinator, North Alabama Healthcare for All
E-mail: pabston@aol.com
Google voicemail: 256-513-9638 (leave message)
Dr. Abston is a general pediatrician who sees patients in Huntsville, Alabama and teaches medical students and family practice residents. She is available to speak on healthcare reform, especially from a human rights, faith based, or medical perspective. She got her combined degrees from the University of South Alabama College of Medicine (PhD in Basic Medical Sciences/Immunology). Her other community activities include helping to establish a homeless clinic and a child passenger safety clinic in Huntsville, serving on the Board of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill/Huntsville chapter, heading the Health Ministries Committee at her church, and running an autism diagnostic clinic.
J Walden Retan, M.D.
Phone: 205-266-4928
E-mail: HealthCareForEveryone@charter.net
Dr. Retan was educated at Hamilton College, MIT, and the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. His post graduate training was in the hospitals of the Harvard Medical system. He came to Birmingham as faculty at University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). He entered private practice of internal medicine and, later, geriatrics in the 1960’s.
Rob Kilpatrick
Exec. Dir., North Alabama Healthcare For All
Cell: 256-486-1277
E-mail: rob2020@mac.com
Rob Kilpatrick is the Executive Director of North Alabama Healthcare for All, a chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. He is a retired United States Marine Corps officer who also had a "second career" in the aerospace industry. His two careers took him to many countries around the world where he observed, first hand, a variety of healthcare systems. His personal volunteer activities, over the years, have put him in contact with many americans who have suffered due to lack of access to the high quality healthcare available to only some of our citizens. In comparing the United States healthcare system to those he observed in countries far less wealthy, he has become increasingly disenchanted with the United States system and convinced that our great nation can do better. Now, in retirement, he is devoting his full attention to advocating for a more humane and cost effective system of healthcare for all persons in the United States.
State Organizations Endorsing HR676
- Tuskeegee, AL
Local Unions Endorsing HR676
- Steelworker Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) Chapter 36
- Steelworker Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) Chapter 36-2, Gardendale, AL
- Steelworker Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) Chapter 9-UR 1, Harvest, AL
- Local 1155, UAW, Birmingham, AL
Alabama State News
By Pippa C. Abston, M.D. | Letters, The Huntsville Times
Not only do uninsured people get denied care, but they die because of it. It is true that for a real emergency, the emergency rooms cannot turn people away. By the time a person's high blood pressure or cancer or diabetes gets that bad, it is often too late.
By Wally Retan, M.D. | The Birmingham News
Begin with what everyone knows. Health care costs and health insurance costs are climbing more than twice as fast as the cost of living and have been for years. There is no need for numbers to prove that statement. Just ask anyone who buys health insurance on his own, any employer trying to take care of his employees, and any employee whose wages are flat because of the rising cost of insurance.
By Kay Campbell | The Huntsville (Ala.) Times
Abston, a pediatrician who has been active with Physicians for a National Health Program, has written "Who is my neighbor? A Christian response to healthcare reform" to answer objections to government interference in the current patch-work system of health care coverage in the U.S.
Pippa C. Abston, MD, PhD | Letters to the editor | Huntsville Times
Reducing Medicaid funding would put every pregnant woman and newborn in our state at risk. It doesn't matter how much money you can pay your doctor if that doctor is not around. The same thing could happen to children now able to get care from excellent pediatric subspecialists. Pediatric surgeons, cardiologists, cancer specialists and others rely on 40 percent or more of their income being paid by Medicaid. Without that money, they may not be able to continue caring for children with private insurance either.
By WALLY RETAN | Birmingham News
As a nation, we spent about $8,000 per person on health care last year. That includes premiums, co-payments, deductibles and out-of-pocket payments for what insurance didn't cover. That's also the money employers didn't put into paychecks because they sent it to an insurance company.
By MARK E. WILSON | Birmingham News
Recently in clinic at Cooper Green Mercy Hospital, I saw a man in his 50s who had a good relationship with his doctor until three years ago, when he lost his job and his health insurance. Before long, he could no longer afford health care from his doctor. He had a history of "borderline diabetes," but he felt reasonably well, until last month, when his big toe turned black. He came to our emergency room and was admitted with uncontrolled diabetes, kidney disease and gangrene of his toe, which required an amputation.
By Dr. Oliver Fein | The Huntsville (Ala.) Times
President Obama’s health reform plan hasn’t stalled just because of one election in Massachusetts. The seeds for today’s impasse were planted long ago.
By Patricia C. McCarter | Huntsville Times
Asked how many people knew someone who had died because they couldn't afford medical care, five of the 70 people at the Health Care is a Human Right physicians panel discussion stood up.
By Pippa Abston, MD, PhD and Huntsville-area physicians. | Huntsville Times
We are your doctors, and we are frustrated. Frustrated over endless insurance paperwork and denials of coverage. Frustrated that our patients can't choose their own doctors because of insurance restrictions; frustrated when our patients lose their insurance coverage and can't afford medical care.
By Patricia C. McCarter | Huntsville Times
Everybody in. Nobody out. With these four words, Huntsville pediatrician Pippa Abston described what she believes is the best health care option for America. She also described it as "Medicare for all," a concept that concerns citizens who don't support the federal government getting bigger.