Editor’s note: This commentary is by Mary Gerisch, of Bennington, who is a member-leader of the Health Care Justice Campaign of Rights & Democracy.
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care
is the most shocking and inhumane.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
[T]he media would have us believe that most of our elected representatives do not feel, or believe, that health care is a priority during this legislative session.
I would like to think this cannot be true. Health care is clearly the kind of intersectional issue that impacts all facets of our lives.
Nationally, we have seen an effort by those embracing the theory of austerity and scarcity to cut back on our health care. There was an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, there are cuts to federal funding for Medicaid, substance abuse rehabilitation, and almost every other aspect of health care that we, as humans, need to simply survive. Our neighboring state of New Hampshire embraces the work requirements for Medicaid eligibility, which we must not let happen in Vermont.
Now, more than ever, we, your people, need you to know that our lives are at stake. When I was protesting health care cuts in Washington, D.C., I did so with someone who will die if the Medicaid cuts go through. They cannot afford their treatment or medication without Medicaid assistance. Hundreds of thousands of people in our nation now realize the importance of health care to each of us, and the crisis of our health care system.
Rights & Democracy’s Health Care Justice Voter campaign embraces all aspects of our human right to health care. And it’s designed to let you know how we need you — our elected representatives — to act affirmatively, prevent cuts and further implement systems that allow us to claim our right to health care.
RAD’s Health Care Justice platform supports all possible advancements to our human right to health care, and a path to universal single payer health care in Vermont and nationwide. Our national platform includes:
• Support for Medicare For All, continued funding of CHIP, expansion of Medicaid, LGBTQ, and reproductive health rights;
• Access to all aspects of health care for each of us.
• Opposition to any and all cuts to Medicaid, substance abuse funds or Medicare.
• Opposition to any requirements to work in order to qualify for Medicaid, and the block granting of health care funds.
We are at a divergence in the path to an equitable, safe, health care system for all — nationally as well as statewide. We can either embrace our abundance and common human condition to lift up our ability to live dignified, healthy lives, or we can ignore those theories and embrace scarcity and austerity.
We ask Vermont’s legislators to join us and to protect us from a system that prioritizes profits of the medical industrial /insurance complex over the public and individual health.
Here in Vermont, we need leadership more than ever. We need legislators to help us move toward universal, single-payer health care. We need them to to prevent funding cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and substance abuse. We need them to reject the implementation of Medicaid work requirements. We need them to make sure that families can care for each other during times of illness by allowing them to take paid family and medical leave. Our health and our ability to maintain it is crucial to our wellbeing as individual and families.
We need to also reject the faulty logic and mythology that creates these cuts on a federal level and threatens to invade even our own state. Let us attune each other to the concept of suffering, whether we feel it personally or see it in the faces and hearts of our fellow human beings. Let us not fall into the faulty logic traps that make fear, scarcity, and austerity the tenets of a health care system.
I know that many of our legislators are aware that the frailty of human life means that we are all subject to health needs of all kinds, however unexpected. That we all, regardless of race, ability, sexual identity or religion, are bound together in that human frailty. I think they know that a human life is worth far more than what is politically popular, and I am not sure any one of us could even imagine how to place a dollar amount on that life.
Let us also dispense with the myth that “Vermont tried health care and it failed,” and help our elected officials continue to move on the path to true universal access to all health care put to rest the idea that human rights-based legislation for health care related issues isn’t possible in our country.
Let us help them turn down the opportunity to embrace a mentality of fear and scarcity and embrace our joint humanity with abundant compassion and justice to create systemic change.
