By Doug Cunningham

Tales from the nation's healthcare crisis front gathered in an AFL-CIO healthcare survey vividly illustrate the tragedies and hardships of a broken U.S. health care system. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

[Sweeney]: "The survey results paint a devastating picture of a health care system that costs too much, covers too little, leaves too many behind, and is getting worse."

Heather Booth heads the AFL-CIO’s health care reform effort aimed at achieving reform in 2009 around basic principles that include providing quality health care to all with controlled costs and a public alternative to private insurance.

[Booth]: "We're now focusing this health care campaign through the election to encourage, persuade and hold candidates accountable to these principles so they become real champions of reform."

Kitty Vincent lost a loved one to cancer because she had no insurance and couldn’t afford the care to save her life.

[Vincent]:"She also didn't qualify for aid from the county or state of Michigan because she worked too much. By September of 2006, she was dead. The massive cancer spread to her ovaries and finally her lungs. She died three months after diagnosis. Medicaid was finally approved after her death and they continued to send bills to my house in her name."