A message on a banner from the Health Care for America Now Campaign reflects
how some L.A. residents feel.
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Cynthia Brumfield had just started a new job when she received the devastating diagnosis that she had breast cancer.

Luckily, doctors caught the cancer early enough that radiation treatments obliterated the tumor, giving Brumfield a new lease on life.

However, even with the tumor gone, her ordeal was far from over.

Ineligible to receive health insurance from her new employer until the end of her three-month probationary period, Brumfield had to shell out several hundred dollars each month to stay on her previous employer's insurance plan through COBRA.

But the final blow came when side effects of the follow-up treatment for her cancer made her too sick to work, and Brumfield had to quit the job she had started less than three months before her diagnosis.

Unemployed and stuck with mounting medical bills, Brumfield saw her life's savings dwindle down to nearly nothing, and applied for relief through Medicare.

When she found out she did not qualify for Medicare benefits, she made the drastic decision to forgo the five-year protocol of Tamoxifen, a powerful drug proven to stave off recurrences of breast cancer, and return to work.

"You have to make these horrible, horrible choices," Brumfield said. "What bill do you not pay in order to get medical care?"

The experience prompted Brumfield to head to the Lucy Florence Coffee House in Leimert Park Wednesday to attend a viewing party of President Barack Obama's address to Congress detailing his proposed health care plan.

At the party, which was hosted by the Courage Campaign - an online network for activists boasting 700,000 members - Brumfield planned to connect with like-minded individuals who would join her in a grassroots campaign aimed at pushing Obama's proposed health care plan through Congress.

Obama's plan includes a number of consumer protections against insurance companies and an inexpensive public option for those who can't afford private insurance. Without it, private insurance companies won't have to keep their prices low enough to successfully compete with the public option.

"We've got to be loud, we've got to be strong," Brumfield said. "We have to put the pressure on."

On Wednesday, around 20 people gathered at the Lucy Florence Coffee House to watch Obama's speech on a large flat screen television mounted on the wall.
 
The coffee house's weathered hardwood floors and soothing color scheme created a salon-like feel to the discussion following Obama's speech.

Conversation centered on ways attendees could show their support for Obama's plan.

Small business owner Maria Elena Cabral suggested using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to organize armies of people to contact their congressional representative and demand he or she support health care reform.

"If our politicians aren't going to do what's right for the American public right now, then they do not deserve to have a job," she said.

However, not everyone was impressed with the president's speech. While some thought he was strategic in his political approach, others viewed it as weakness.

"He skipped a few steps. He didn't explain why this was so important," said activist Lester Aponte.

Despite their dissatisfaction on some elements of his speech, it was agreed that the group would continue to support the president and push for the health care reform plan to pass.   

For Courage Campaign founder Rick Jacobs, health care reform can't come soon enough and is central to a civilized society.

"You can't have a state be progressive if people don't have access to health care," he said. "We have no choice right now. We have to have health insurance for everyone."

-Additional reporting for this story was contributed by Sharis Delgadillo