A Facebook friend sent me a painful link recently. Alycia Ramirez, sadly, lost her mother-in-law to a healthcare system that we must characterize accurately as evil. She died from a denial of care.
Had we had Medicare for All that covered everyone in the United States, Ms. Ramirez’s mother-in-law would be alive. This morning I wrote the blog post titled “Is opposition to Medicare for All to save investors while killing and bankrupting Americans moral?” that puts the whole thing into context.
Why do they hate Medicare for All? Investors in health insurance stock do very well. They have been taking your premiums denying you as many drugs, procedures, and coverage as possible, and then pocketing your payments in the form of dividends, undeserved inflated million-dollar salary to executives, and bribes (lobbying) to government officials, read politicians. In other words, they were legally killing Americans for a profit. Medicare for All gets them out of the picture. …
All discussions, arguments, and narratives to the contrary that a single-payer Medicare for All system is the most efficient and will cover everyone is an attempt to keep a for-profit system to transfer your hard earned dollars to a few wealthy individuals. They will try to scare you and make things more complicated than they are. They are not. Accept no less than single-payer Medicare for All. No private health insurance system can beat it lest we subsidize said system.
And this is what Ms. Ramirez’s mother-in-law was caught up into throughout her slow, painful methodical decline. Listening to her cannot help but bring tears to one’s eyes. But then what follows immediately is anger.
I immediately contacted Alycia and asked if she would tell her story to the Politics Done Right audience. Her story is one replicated over and over throughout America day in and day out. Even with her pain, she agreed to do so.
Alycia Ramirez’s healthcare story
Alycia pointed out that her mother was undocumented. She worked several jobs to take care of her family. She could not afford insurance, and she could not get Medicaid. For those who believe her immigration status should be an issue they should note that when Americans fall ill throughout Europe, they are taken care of humanely.
Ms. Ramirez said her mother’s heart condition had been getting progressively worse for several years. She had blockage for some time, but the best they would do because of her health insurance situation was to treat a condition that required surgery with medications. Not until it was too late did they insert a stent that did not work and she died a few hours afterward.
How many must more die, go bankrupt, or be left physically and emotionally scarred before we make a change?
single-payer Medicare for All is our only option. Period.