PHOTO/RITA VALENTI
“Hey hey, ho ho, Everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are, what we stand for. We are the nurses, mighty mighty nurses, fighting for our patients, fighting for their rights, Medicare for All, Medicare for All Now!!”
Scores of southern nurses marched through the streets of Miami just before the first Democratic Party candidate debate on June 26, chanting and singing for improved Medicare for All!: “Everybody In and Nobody Out”. We were greeted with enthusiastic honks and shouts of support from passersby.
Marissa, one of the nurse leaders, told a story about a pregnant patient in labor who had health insurance, but couldn’t afford to use it because of high deductibles and co-pays. The patient didn’t qualify for Medicaid because her income was too high, over $1,983 a month and she had job related insurance anyway, though unusable. Between her work schedules and having unaffordable health insurance the patient had no prenatal care. She hemorrhaged and the nurses and doctors rushed treatment to save her life.
This story is repeated thousands of times in Southern states with no Medicaid expansion. “These traumas are preventable if we had Medicare for All, that secures all the healthcare coverage we need from prenatal and mental health to dental, vision, primary care and long term care,” said Marissa.
And, a national public health insurance that is comprehensive and all-inclusive would be a huge step in ending all the gross health disparities that are experienced in southern states, like Florida, that did not expand Medicaid.
Five southern states, with Ohio and Missouri following suit, passed the most restrictive abortion legislation in the country. These same states suffer from the worse maternal outcomes. Georgia’s maternal death rate is 37.2 deaths per 100,000 births, the highest in the country and the first state that restricted abortion to six weeks of pregnancy after the legislature passed the so-called ‘heart beat’ bill this year. Mississippi also claims the title of #1 in maternal deaths at 20% higher than the national average. Black women are most at risk accounting for 80% of pregnancy related cardiac deaths. And the issue isn’t just about abortion. It’s about reproductive justice as defined, developed and fought for by the women of color reproductive justice collective of SisterSong: “As the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
Every section of government from the electoral arena to the judicial system is being challenged from the bottom up, not just to resist the onslaught against our current fractured corporate healthcare system, but to take a giant step forward and win universal government guaranteed secure health coverage for all.
As the nurses say in our value statement: We value a “single standard of care that is safe, effective and therapeutic and NOT based on ability to pay!’ We are literally fighting for our lives and the lives of our patients. Now is the time for Medicare4All!
