Ex-SPAN-Sion plans - SPAN Ohio's Jerry Gordon seeks converts.

Say what you will about Michael Moore's films, they get people talking. So when the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights screened a preview of Moore's new documentary SiCKO a week before its June 29 opening, the sidewalk outside was filled with sign-holders, petition gatherers and nurses in red scrubs passing out informational literature. And many of those leaving the screening stopped to listen and learn more.

"When people were leaving after SiCKO, they were just standing around," says Lea Neider, a retired registered nurse who was among them. "They wanted to talk. I've never seen a Michael Moore film and I didn't know what to expect, but he told the story. It was incredible. I was really moved."

SiCKO's central issue of access to health care is one that's been on Neider's mind for a while. She's on the state council of Single-Payer Action Network Ohio (SPAN Ohio) and a member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee. The NNOC is the national wing of the California Nurses Association, one of the most outspoken groups in advocating for guaranteed health-care coverage for all.

In the six years since a small group convened in Cleveland to discuss raising awareness of single-payer health care (in which all medical services are paid for through one fund, administered by a non-profit government agency, like Medicare), SPAN Ohio has seen its membership and impact grow dramatically.

Jerry Gordon, SPAN Ohio's state secretary, recalls that the first wave of activism around the issue in the early to mid-'90s crumbled when the Clinton health-care plan failed amid an onslaught of opposition by the for-profit insurance industry.

"Health-care reform groups drew the conclusion that replacing the for-profit system with single-payer wasn't in the cards and the best thing was to lay the groundwork for change sometime in the future," he says. "That was the situation when I retired in 1998 as a representative of the International United Food and Commercial workers. I surveyed the scene, and no one was talking about single-payer because of this retreat and this accommodation."

He adds, "The main problem we ran into in talking about the issue was a great reluctance by many people with regard to a government program. We had a huge education job to do coming out of the Reagan years where government was the problem, not the solution. There's been a seismic change since then. Now three-quarters of the people in the country believe government should assure health care for everyone."

A statewide organizing conference in Columbus in January 2003 drew over 100 people, including representatives from the AFL-CIO. Gradually SPAN formed 12 chapters, divided the state into regions, each with its own coordinator, and built a Web site (spanohio.org).

It has also gotten behind a proposed ballot initiative called Health Care for All Ohioans. The group spent a year putting together drafts, got the petition approved in 2005 and began to collect signatures. It's aiming to place the issue on the ballot in November 2008, if the General Assembly fails to act before then. It also went to local city councils asking them to pass resolutions calling on Ohio's General Assembly to pass guaranteed health care.

When it went to Lakewood City Council, it got more than a resolution: It also gained a valuable ally when Councilman Mike Skindell, who advocated for the resolution, was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives. On April 25, Skindell introduced HB 186 which provides for comprehensive single-payer health care for all Ohioans. He's got 16 co-sponsors, including Robert Hagan of Youngstown, who has been a long-time proponent of the issue and introduced similar bills when he was in the Senate, as well as endorsing SPAN Ohio's petition drive. State Sen. Dale Miller, from Cleveland's western suburbs, introduced the comparable SB 168 with four co-sponsors on May 15.

Cleveland (Region 1) SPAN coordinator Dave Pavlik says, "Each time they've introduced it, it has more co-signers. For over 10 years Hagan's done something. It's been his issue for years. It's been like Kucinich with his Department of Peace. "Oh yeah, here comes Bobby with his health care.'"

Except, says Pavlik, interest is growing.

"[Hagan] had a health-care hearing in Youngstown last year and there were 15-20 politicians there, there were blue-collar workers, steel workers, small-business people, self-employed. They filled the room. Last summer there was a health-care hearing at Trinity Cathedral [in Cleveland] and all these politicians were there nodding their heads and taking notes. [In 2001] it wasn't on the radar. Everybody was looking at a fix through insurance companies. They're starting to catch on that this isn't the solution. People are tricked into paying huge premiums or their companies do, and they go to use it and find they don't have much coverage at all. People are putting off preventive care. The last couple of years companies have been starting to come around because it's a cost-driver and we can't compete."

Lea Neider says that while the Ohio branch of the National Nurses Organizing Committee hasn't endorsed single-payer as a group, preferring to focus on patient-care issues, she and many other members are working through SPAN Ohio. She jumped on board when she joined a California Nurses Association group volunteering in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

"I went to Baton Rouge and drove to Lake Charles with someone who was doing ground support with CNA. He was the first one that told me who this group [NNOC] was. There's a group of maybe 20 of us here in Ohio who are strongly committed to single-payer. Nationally the position is [that] we support it, but as a group here we can't make this an issue. Direct-care nurses are very tired with their heavy patient loads, and you can become vulnerable to retaliation."

Although SPAN Ohio has a gargantuan signature-gathering effort ahead of it (it needs 3 percent of the large turnout in the 2006 gubernatorial election), Pavlik says this is one issue where Ohio isn't in last place.

"In the fact that we have a petition and a bill before the legislature, we are already ahead of a lot of other states. We're behind a lot of other states in publicity. SPAN is still an unknown quantity to most people."

But Gordon thinks SiCKO will help change that.

"I think that the movie is a transformational event," he says. "It is stirring people like nothing before. I've had calls from people who have seen it and it has elevated peoples' understanding. There are endless documents, articles, books about the health-care crisis, but Michael Moore is the one that has put it on the map."