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The crisis of health care is reaching a crescendo in the United States. Groups like Vote Health are steering the resulting public conscious and conscience toward providing all people with this most basic human need, access to health care.
It is personally fulfilling to me to be in this particular struggle, among all the social justice issues that beckon. I was raised with a keen awareness that good health is fundamental to living a good life. My mother and grandmother often said in Yiddish, Lieben und zei gezunt, or Live and be well. This expression is traditionally said before making future plans, with the awareness that bad health (or other misfortune) can interfere with everything one hopes to achieve. My fortune to have health insurance for most of my life is a blessing I don't take for granted. Had I not had timely access to costly medical tests, procedures and hospital care in the last few years, I would not be alive.
Like many current members of Vote Health, I migrated into the organization after working hard to pass Proposition 186, known as the Single Payer Initiative, in 1994. We knew then that it was necessary to return our focus to securing and strengthening our local safety net, the Alameda County Medical Center, while we also worked toward a single payer national health care system. County public hospitals have been disappearing everywhere in the United States for years now, and the economic pressures on those remaining are great. For too many years our Medical Center and community clinics have been struggling without adequate state and federal support to meet the overwhelming demands of more than 250,000 uninsured residents in the county.
We welcome and encourage people in our geographic area to join us. Your desire to serve others in the community can find expression in Vote Health's mission to ensure that health care is a right, not a privilege. If you are visiting the website and live outside of the Bay Area, we hope our experience and resources encourage your own community's fight for expanded health care and ultimately for a single payer national health fund. Please contact us with questions or comments.
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