Grassroots community leaders of the Santa Clara County Single-Payer Health Care Coalition hosted a Zoom panel Saturday for community members and city officials to discuss inequities within the health care system.
The Santa Clara County Single-Payer Health Care Coalition is a collective of activist groups that works to guarantee health care to all California residents, regardless of documentation status, by educating communities to pass universal health care laws.
The event, “Health Justice Dialogue,” featured SCC Assemblymember Ash Kalra and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna.
Kalra said communities of color and low-income communities have suffered the most, yet they’re not receiving the same care as wealthier and predominantly white communities.
“Truly accessible health care has been kept from our marginalized communities through so many hurdles,” Kalra said.
Meriam Ahmad, a youth organizer for the coalition, said the pandemic has exposed the consequences of health care inequality.
“If [the pandemic] doesn’t show what the problem with our health care system is, then no time ever will,” Ahmad said in a Zoom interview.
Community members discussed the importance of pushing for single-payer health care and ending systemic racism in the health care system.
A single-payer health care system would eliminate private insurance companies in favor of a single, publicly funded health care agency.
Joan Simon, a longtime member of SCC Single Payer Health Care Coalition, said private insurance companies profit off of denying people the health coverage they pay for.
“[Private insurance companies] are making between 15% and 30% profit,” Simon said in a Zoom interview. “We need to take that money that’s being put in their pockets and put it towards healthcare.”
Kiana Simmons, founder and president of Human Empowerment Radical Optimism (H.E.R.O.) Tent, a volunteer organization that provides resources to Bay Area activist groups, said Black people are underrepresented and underfunded throughout the medical field.
“In order to receive adequate health care, one must see themselves and their needs represented in medical professionals, in scientific research topics and in research participants and databases,” Simmons said during the panel.
James Staten, a board member of the Silicon Valley chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said systemic racism in health care has created distrust between the Black community and the medical field.
He cited the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and other experiments involving the “sterilization of Black and brown poor people and women” as major reasons for mistrust.
The study was funded by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1932. Hundreds of Black men were subjected to toxic Syphilis treatments or a lack of treatment over four decades without their informed consent. They were never given proper treatment for their Syphilis, even after Penicillin was found to be effective.
At the end of the event, speakers talked about what actions could be taken to end health care inequality.
Mari Lopez, a California Nurses Association organizer, discussed AB 1400, a bill currently sitting in the California Assembly that guarantees equitable health care and was introduced by Kalra. The California Nurses Association is a labor union and professional association of registered nurses in the U.S.
The bill would create a single-payer system that would cover everyone in California regardless of medical conditions, immigration status or income. The coverage would include dental, vision and hearing and wouldn’t require copays, deductibles or premiums.
However, Simon said this won’t be possible without collecting federal funding California is entitled to under the Affordable Care Act.
The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 to expand Medicaid. It also allows states to experiment with different health care systems and receive funding in return.
“[Health care] is a human right,” Simon said. “And we’re out here to fight for it.”
