Teresa Leger Fernandez:
Today, what we did was go out to Dixon. And it was marvelous. You know, I choked up because it was exactly what community should be, which is volunteer firefighters, department of health, El Centro Medico, all working together to make sure that these rural communities get the vaccine and beautifully set out and just makes your heart warm. We got to talk to some of the people who were getting the vaccine and what it meant for them, like the sense of liberation, but that they could get it there and their own community. It was exactly what we’re trying to do with the COVID relief. And it’s wonderful to be able to say, this is the story I’m taking back when we having the conversations with the congressional Hispanic caucus of this is how you get it done. You would send the vaccines to make sure that the federally qualified health clinics, which are basically our rural health clinics that are funded primarily through federal dollars, make sure that they could be operating because when they’re operating, they’re there to serve the community and they do it in a beautifully collaborative manner. And what is the question from the listener?
Mary-Charlotte Domandi:
Well, the question from the listener, she’s a woman who has grandchild and the parents of this grandchild tried to sign up for insurance through the Affordable Care Act, but they couldn’t get their child signed up for health insurance because the child qualified for chip the children’s health insurance program, which is great. But then chip told them that they wouldn’t even start reviewing the application for a month and a half. But in the meantime, they couldn’t get ACA coverage either. And this is a problem of intersecting bureaucracies, where you’ve got so many different programs, which results in uninsured people, but also people spending vast amounts of time, kind of going crazy as they try to navigate the system. How do you understand that kind of thing? I mean, I know you can’t like solve this person’s problem today on the phone or whatever, but is there a kind of way of looking at this so that these kinds of problems start to get solved?
TLF:
One of the ways of looking at it is for a Medicare for all program would be, where we have a program that says we will have a single-payer system so that we don’t have all of these different—sometimes overlapping, but sometimes with gaps—kinds of programs to provide medical care for everyone across the country. A Medicare for all program would solve it. But since we’re not likely to get that in the immediate future, we’re going to get some progress towards it. Looking for these gaps is what people in my office actually want to hear about because then we can figure out is this one of those gaps that needs to be solved legislatively? Or is it really one of those gaps, but we need to be able to have better services for our community so that you don’t spend all of that time trying to figure this out.
And then what if something happens in that month and a half or two months that you don’t have service?
MCD:
Exactly.
TLF:
I mean, that happened to me once I actually had a fairly life-threatening occurrence happen in the three days that I was uninsured, and it was a financial mess. So I feel for that. But you said I can’t on this moment help solve this granddaughter’s problem, but I do have people who can try. So I would urge all of the listeners to reach out to my office, go to my website, my congressional website, because we have Carlos Sanchez and Francesca DiPalma who, this is what they do is help people navigate these kinds of roadblocks or barriers that one agency has with another. I mean, Carlos today was telling me how he often will hear like Medicare will say, no, we’re not doing that. Or the VA will say, no, we’re not doing that. And they’re each trying to point the finger at the other, and what he’ll do is he’ll get the letter from one agency and send it to the other agency and say, this is what they’re saying. Your letter is saying that we clearly have a problem. Let’s fix it. And we do help people fix their problems. That’s what my office does is help people just like this.
MCD:
Excellent. I’m not sure if this person—I think her she’s New Mexican, but her children, I think live in Texas, but I’ll find out. And if they’re local, I’ll definitely call you.
TLF:
And if they’re not, if they live in Texas, then what they should do is call their representative. I mean, every Congress person has that. She should be able to go to her congressional representative for help.
MCD:
So if we had Medicare for all, I mean, right now we have so many different things. We have the affordable care act. We have people getting private insurance. We have the Indian Health Service. We have Medicare, we have the VA. Do all of those things, is there a vision where those would all come together under one umbrella?
TLF:
Not necessarily under one umbrella. Medicare for all is really a payer system. So you have a single payer. And so some programs would continue to exist separately. Like the Indian Health Service, because of the responsibilities it has to Native Americans. Right now in Medicare, you still have an insurance component to that, ror people who want more than what is available for Medicare so they can buy plan B. So it doesn’t wipe everything out. But for a lot of things, it would create uniformity. You would eliminate so much waste that is in our insurance-based system.
MCD:
And the people who are against it right now, is it basically the insurance company lobby and the people whose campaigns are supported by them?
TLF:
Yeah. The biggest lobby Medicare for all is the insurance company, because the role that they play in our health care system would be drastically reduced. So they are the ones who stand the most to lose from a Medicare for all system. The people who stand the most to gain are middle-class American families, because they’re the ones who actually pay a bigger percentage of their income in healthcare costs.
MCD:
Let’s say HR1 passes the Senate in one way or another and there’s more transparency in campaign finance reform and new restrictions and things like that. Would that help the movement toward a single payer system?
TLF:
It would definitely help the movement towards lowering healthcare costs, because the strength of the individual voters and the strength of voters would increase over dark money and PACs and all of that. So the reason why HR1 and stronger access to the ballot for everybody is important is then the accountability of an elected official is more directly towards the people they represent, rather than the corporations and the PACs that help elect them. So that accountability then becomes what is best for my constituents versus what might be best for the large corporate PACs and super PACs that fund my candidacy. So then you start seeing true benefits for people first.
