[Sosfbay-discuss] Fw: HMOs:--- Death Panels

[Caroline Yacoub]

--- On Fri, 9/18/09, shane que hee <squehee at ucla.edu> wrote:


From: shane que hee <squehee at ucla.edu>
Subject: HMOs:--- Death Panels
To: 
Date: Friday, September 18, 2009, 5:14 AM




 
> Subject: Real 'Norma Rae' dies of cancer after insurer delayed treatment 
 

> Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 12:06 AM 
> Real 'Norma Rae' dies of cancer after 
> insurer delayed 
> treatment 
> 
> Facing South - Sept. 15, 2009 
> The Institute for Southern Studies 
> "A New Voice for a Changing South" 
> 
> The North Carolina union organizer who was the 
> inspiration for the movie "Norma Rae" died on Friday of 
> brain cancer after a battle with her insurance company, 
> which delayed her treatment. She was 68. 
> 
> Crystal Lee Sutton, formerly Crystal Lee Jordan, was 
> fired from her job folding towels at the J.P. Stevens 
> textile plant in her hometown of Roanoke Rapids, N.C. 
> for trying to organize a union in the early 1970s. Her 
> last action at the plant -- writing the word "UNION" on 
> a piece of cardboard and standing on her work table, 
> leading her co-workers to turn off their machines in 
> solidarity -- was memorialized in the 1979 film by 
> actress Sally Field. The police physically removed 
> Sutton from the plant for her action. 
> 
> But her efforts ultimately succeeded, as the 
> Amalgamated Clothing Workers won the right to represent 
> the plant's employees on Aug. 28, 1974. Sutton later 
> became a paid organizer for the union, which through a 
> series of mergers became part of UNITE HERE before 
> splitting off this year to form Workers United, which 
> is affiliated with the Service Employees International 
> Union. 
> 
> Several years ago, Sutton was diagnosed with 
> meningioma, a type of cancer of the nervous system. 
> While such cancers are typically slow-growing, Sutton's 
> was not -- and she went two months without potentially 
> life-saving medication because her insurance wouldn't 
> cover it initially. Sutton told the Burlington (N.C.) 
> Times-News last year that the insurer's behavior was an 
> example of abuse of the working poor: 
> 
>     "How in the world can it take so long to find 
> out 
>     [whether they would cover the medicine or 
> not] when 
>     it could be a matter of life or death," she 
> said. 
>     "It is almost like, in a way, committing 
> murder." 
> 
> Though Sutton eventually received the medication, the 
> cancer had already taken hold. She passed away on 
> Friday, Sept. 11 in a Burlington, N.C. hospice. 
> 
> "Crystal Lee Sutton was a remarkable woman whose brave 
> struggles have left a lasting impact on this country 
> and without doubt, on me personally," Field said in a 
> statement released Friday. "Portraying Crystal Lee in 
> 'Norma Rae,' however loosely based, not only elevated 
> me as an actress, but as a human being." 
> 
> Field won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and the Best Actress 
> award at the Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of 
> the character based on Sutton. The film in turn was 
> based on the 1975 book "Crystal Lee: A Woman of 
> Inheritance" by New York Times reporter Henry P. "Hank" 
> Leiferman. 
> 
> Sutton was only 17 when she began working at the J.P. 
> Stevens plant in northeastern North Carolina, where 
> conditions were poor and the pay was low. A 
> Massachusetts-based company that for many years was 
> listed on the Fortune 500, J.P. Stevens is now part of 
> the WestPoint Home conglomerate. 
> 
> In 1973, Sutton, by then a mother of three, was earning 
> only $2.65 an hour. That same year, Eli Zivkovich, a 
> former coal miner from West Virginia, came to Roanoke 
> Rapids to organize the plant and began working with 
> Sutton, who was fired after she copied a flyer posted 
> by management warning that blacks would run the union. 
> It was that incident which led Sutton to stand up with 
> her "UNION" sign. 
> 
> "It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I 
> would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared 
> for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. 
> and the world," she said in a newspaper interview last 
> year. "That my family and children and children like 
> mine will have a fair share and equality." 
> 
> For more on Sutton's life and work, visit the website 
> of the Alamance Community College's Crystal Sutton 
> Collection. 
> 
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