UCSF students, joined by several of their mentors, protested the rise in for-profit health care organizations at a campus rally yesterday. The rally was part of a national effort calling for a moratorium on the conversion of non-profit health care organizations to profit making entities.

Students and faculty protested the practices of for-profit hospitals and HMOs, some of which make $100 per patient per day in profit and net multi-million dollar deals for their executives.

Students protest by performing a skit based on the “white coat ceremony.”

The event was timed to correspond with yesterday’s publication of the “Call to Action,” a petition signed by thousands of medical professionals, in the current Journal of the American Medical Association, and today’s publication in the New York Times of an expanded document containing the names of local endorsers, including Chancellor Haile Debas and Peter Van Etten, CEO of the new UCSF-Stanford Health Care, a private non-profit organization.

“Over six million Californians have no insurance coverage whatsoever,” said Kevin Grumbach, associate professor of family and community medicine, adding that HMO chief executives routinely make millions of dollars for merging their organizations. Grumbach read quotes from such executives, who liken health care to a commodity and emulate business models put forth by McDonalds and WalMart. “We’re not ready to turn in our stethoscopes for spatulas to serve up the medical equivalent of fast food,” Grumbach said.

Saying he was proud of the students who organized the protest, Grumbach stated the importance of speaking out about health care organizations that are “putting concern for profits ahead of care for patients.”

Medical student Anthony Kim spoke of “uncertainty and fear about where our health care system is headed.” Dozens of other medical students protested with a performance based on the “white coat ceremony,” some wearing signs that read “Corporate Fat Cat” and one cracking a whip.

“These are unusual times that call for extraordinary efforts,” said Dan Lowenstein, assistant professor of neurology. Describing the protest as “an act of contempt” for a health care system that treats health care as a commodity, Lowenstein urged medical providers to take an “action-oriented” approach to redefining health care.

Faculty also spoke about the impact on the nursing profession. “For-profit hospitals are forcing nurses to work longer hours and take care of more patients and this is creating a dangerous situation for patients,” said Charlene Harrington, professor in the School of Nursing. “We must educate the public and fellow professionals and we should be voting with our feet by not supporting for-profit health care.”

A major rallying point throughout the protest was access to health care. Molly Cook, professor of clinical medicine, spoke of her many patients who are uninsured or underinsured. “We need to struggle to make sure that our patients are all able to get the medical attention they need,” she said. “It’s not just good for them--it’s good for us.”

By Paula Murphy

1st appeared 12/3/97

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