On this episode of StudioTulsa on Health, guest host Dr. John Schumann speaks with reporter April Dembosky, who covers health care issues and medical news for public-radio station KQED in San Francisco (and also for NPR, on occasion). Dembosky recently participated in a segment on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered that carried the headline "Calif. Strike Highlights Larger Issues With Mental Health System," and she discusses this piece on our program. Earlier this month, as noted at the NPR website, "more than 2,000 mental health workers for the HMO health care giant Kaiser Permanente in California went on strike. The strike was organized by the National Union of Healthcare Workers. The union says Kaiser Permanente patients have been the victims of 'chronic failure to provide its members with timely, quality mental health care.'" Dembosky also talks with Dr. Schumann about various other health-related issues that -- much like the mental-health-workers-job-action saga -- are California-specific yet also reflective of larger developments and ideas in American health care more generally.
CA Mental Health Workers: On Strike...and at the Forefront of Certain Problems in U.S. Health Care
