Mrs. Myra Rosenbloom, a courageous woman on acrusade to pass a bill in Congress, which could save many lives.

   It was September 3, 1992 when Jack Rosenbloom, Myra's husband of forty-five years, suffered a heart attack and was rushed by ambulance to a Lake County, Indiana hospital. Jack's condition was stabilized and he was kept as an in-patient for further observation. Two evenings later as Myra was visiting her resting husband, he began experiencing a relapse of chest pains. Panicked, Mrs. Rosenbloom immediately ran to the nurse's station. "Please find my doctor," she pleaded with the nurse, "my husband is having a heart attack." The nurse then informed her that there was nothing she could do; that she would bring Mr. Rosenbloom a Mylanta on the way to her dinner break. After an hour and a half of severe chest pains, the hospital staff finally deemed Mr. Rosenbloom's situation a Code Blue emergency. Even then, no doctor showed up.

   Jack died that same night, shortly after eight o'clock.

   That tragic night of September 5, 1992, Myra Rosenbloom anguished over why there was no doctor present to attend to her dying husband. What she learned soon after was that by law, there didn't need to be. Indiana, along with Florida and New York, as well as virtually every other state in the country, had no written law requiring a doctor to be on-duty in a hospital. In particular, Indiana's law stated only that a doctor be notified "within a reasonable amount of time." These words were all that she needed to know. Myra Rosenbloom now had a mission: to put doctors back into hospitals.

   With laws like these "I'd tell people they're better off checking into a Holiday Inn if they are sick," Myra argues, "otherwise without doctors all we are running are expensive medical motels."

Mr. Jack Rosenbloom.

   Armed with this information about Indiana's hospital laws, Myra first contacted her state senator, Frank Mrvan, who upon hearing her story was as shocked as she first was about the existing legislation. "I couldn't believe what she was saying was true," the senator said. After some initial calls to friends in the medical community, Mrvan heard countless stories of tragedies similar to Myra Rosenbloom's. "I had always assumed that a hospital was the best place to be if you were sick," Mrvan said. But after realizing how far off this assumption of his was, Mrvan allied himself to Myra's crusade and, in 1993, sponsored a state bill requiring "a house doctor, specifically in charge of ward patients, to be on duty twenty-four hours a day at all publicly funded hospitals with more than one-hundred beds." Unfortunately, with strong lobbying opposition from the Indiana Hospital Association who viewed the proposed legislation as unnecessary and too costly, Myra's bill died in committee without ever making it to the Senate floor for a vote.

   Although initially brokenhearted by the outcome, Myra became even more determined. She worked tirelessly, gaining endorsements from B'nai B'rith and The Disabled American Veterans of Indiana as well as from health care worker groups and labors unions, and in 1994 convinced Senator Mrvan to reintroduce her bill. This time, however, to counterbalance efforts by the special interests from again preventing the bill from reaching a floor vote, Myra Rosenbloom decided that she would lobby in her own behalf. It was a January morning in 1994 when she packed some belongings in a duffel bag and endured a three-hour bus ride to the capitol building in Indianapolis. If those bigwigs in the statehouse wanted reasons why they should pass this bill, Myra Rosenbloom had a personal story that would sure convince them.

   For six days she told the story of Jack's tragedy to anyone who would listen. And for five frigid nights inside the halls of the capitol building she slept on a hard wooden bench just barely long enough to support her five foot body; the only thing that kept her warm was her overcoat. "Those six days were horrible," Myra recalls. "I was so weak from eating poorly. I wasn't able to follow any dietary laws."

   As Myra persevered, legislators argued whether or not the bill would be brought to a vote. It seemed, however, that the lobbyists were winning and the bill would once again die in committee until State Representative Charlie Brown stepped forward and got the bill a hearing before the General Assembly. "She stole my heart with her stick-to-it-iveness," the Representative said.

   Representative Brown had gotten Myra Rosenbloom a chance to speak to the General Assembly on behalf of an entire state; perhaps an entire nation. But after the toll the previous days had taken on her, Myra wondered if she possessed the necessary strength to appeal her case to the ears of those who really mattered. "My voice was totally hoarse and my memory was gone," she remembers. "I didn't know if I'd even be able to communicate anything up there." It was in those moments that she relied on her faith. "I was sitting on the same bench where I had slept the past five nights praying for G-d to put the right words in my mouth. Then when I got up there and started talking to the assembly, everything just came out right."

   Myra's moving testimony recounted the fateful events of September 5, 1992 and was considered instrumental by the supporters of the bill. At the conclusion of her speech, the entire Indiana House of Representatives saluted her impassioned appeal with a standing ovation. In the end, however, only a compromised version of Senator Mrvan's original bill was passed into law in Indiana. The law, which requires a doctor to be on duty at all times, also accepts the presence of an emergency room doctor as meeting the conditions of the legislation. To Myra Rosenbloom, this law didn't go far enough. "There was an emergency room doctor on duty the night Jack died, and he didn't get there in time."

   Though to outsiders her victory in Indianapolis against the hospital lobby seemed like a "David vs. Goliath" type of triumph, Myra herself was less than satisfied with the outcome. "We're back to square one," she stated after the proceedings concluded. In fact, Myra swears that she won't rest until all fifty states have enacted legislation designed to prevent the type of tragedy she has endured.

   In the two years since her showdown in the statehouse, Myra Rosenbloom has worked to put bills, similar to the one proposed in her home state, up for vote in the legislatures of Michigan and Illinois. Presently, there are also efforts in Minnesota aimed at getting the bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote. And while she has succeeded in raising awareness to this little known national concern, her efforts have also enlightened her to other travesties within the health-care system. Never a woman shy about expressing her opinion, Myra insists that her goals would be more easily obtained if legislators weren't so afraid to buck the special interest lobbyists. Additionally, she sees hospitals as being abusive of the Medicare/Medicaid system. "The hospital where my husband Jack died billed Medicaid for four extra days after he already passed," Myra maintains. "He died on the fifth of September and billing was posted until the ninthŠno wonder the system is going bankrupt."

   Recently, Myra Rosenbloom's efforts to change hospital laws have blessed her with an abundance of publicity. Stories and photographs championing her crusade have appeared in People Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and Reader's Digest. Additionally, several network news programs have approached her about airing segments featuring her battle against this flaw in our nation's health care system. Even with all of this exposure, Myra Rosenbloom remains unrelenting in her desire yet somehow quite humble. "I'm just one little old lady doing all this by myself," she maintains. "I'm not looking for publicity or moneyŠI'm just trying to give meaning to Jack's death by doing what's right. Then maybe I can motivate more people to get involved." But when asked how she has attracted such enormous publicity, Myra credits this as an act of G-d. "How could any one person receive so much publicity without His help," she says.

   In fact, as a result of the attention her work has created and the nationwide support she has in turn received, a vote on a federal mandate requiring hospitals to staff doctors around the clock may soon appear on the floor of Congress.

   In a battle against an opponent with seemingly unlimited resources and political influence, Myra Rosenbloom is a present day example who illustrates what can be achieved by the determination of a single individual. Some have called her a hero, others an avenger, while anyone fortunate enough to hear her speak about these issues can only step back and admire her passion, energy and articulation. "I want people to know what the power of faith can do," Myra said recently. "I'm doing all this to help save people's lives. Because if you save one life, you save the worldŠit's written in the Torah."

   Myra Rosenbloom encourages correspondences from readers with a desire to share with her their own related stories or have an interest in making certain these new laws are passed. Write to her at P.O. Box #315 Lansing, IL 60438 Att.: House Position "Pass The Law"

Clifford E. Weinstein, Associate Editor of the Jewish Homemaker, currently resides in Miami Beach, Florida, where he attends Florida International University in pursuit of an MFA in Creative Writing.