* Early release:
MUST READ before you start Your Monday -- for proper perspective!
Focused Read in 3 minutes, maybe a bit more..
“The Fight for Health
Care Has Always Been About Civil Rights
In dismantling Obamacare
and slashing Medicaid, Republicans would strike a blow against
signature victories for racial equality in America.
It was a cold March night
when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. turned his pulpit towards health
care. Speaking to a packed, mixed-race crowd of physicians and
health-care workers in Chicago, King gave one of his most influential
late-career speeches, blasting the American Medical Association and
other organizations for a “conspiracy of inaction” in the
maintenance of a medical apartheid that persisted even then in 1966.
There, King spoke words
that have since become a maxim: “Of all the inequalities that
exist, the injustice in health care is the most shocking and
inhuman.” In the moment, it reflected the work that King and that
organization, the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), were
doing to advance one of the since-forgotten pillars of the
civil-rights movement: the idea that health care is a right. To those
heroes of the civil-rights movement, it was clear that the demons of
inequality that have always haunted America could not be vanquished
without the establishment and protection of that right.
Fifty-one years later,
those demons have not yet been defeated...
… People of color were
the most likely groups to gain coverage and access to care under the
ACA, and in the centuries-old struggle over health, they have never
been closer both to racial equality of, access and to, the federal
protection of health care as a civil right. But if Republicans have
their way, that dream will be deferred.
… even though the ACA
isn’t a single-payer or universal system, it did a better job than
the status quo ante at ensuring some sort of access to care.
According to J. Nadine Gracia, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Minority Health and the Director of the Office of Minority Health
at HHS—positions and an office that were themselves reauthorized
and expanded by Obamacare—the ACA’s benefits were immediately
realized in communities of color. “The Affordable Care Act is the
most important law to help reduce health disparities since the
passage Medicare and Medicaid,” Gracia said, “because the law is
addressing issues of access, affordability, and quality of care,
which have all been obstacles and barriers that relate to the health
of minorities.”
It’s worth noting that
much of the animus behind the opposition to Obamacare is tied to
race. Studies have shown that racial prejudice is
a good predictor of opposition to the bill, and its central policy of
Medicaid has always been subject to implicit racial biases in public
opinion. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that
Republican voters tend to view Medicaid as welfare, with all the
attendant stereotypes and dog whistles.
Much of that implicit
opposition was summed up in a famous 2009 rant from
conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who called the plan
“reparations,” and said it reflected Obama’s belief that “this
country was immorally and illegitimately founded by a very small
minority of white Europeans … and it’s about time that the scales
were made even.” The irony is that Mr. Limbaugh was correct about
the bill in one respect: It did disproportionately help the poor and
people of color, and in doing so, begin to correct a centuries-old
injustice.
In a statement defending
his signature policy in May, President Obama articulated just why the
ACA was such a historic piece of legislation. “When I took office,
millions of Americans were locked out of our health care system,”
he wrote. “We finally declared that in America, health care is not
a privilege for a few, but a right for everybody.”
Contrary to Obama’s
statement, the ACA actually didn’t manage to make health care a
right, nor has it allowed all of those locked-out people
into the system. But it does come closer to those goals, and does
grant access to millions of people of color who had been left out for
generations. Unfortunately, the law has also triggered the same
conservative immune response that killed single-payer in the past;
the same kind of response that King so eloquently railed against in
Chicago.
With 51 votes and a
presidential signature, Republicans can begin turning back the
clock.”
You
can read more here
Focused Thought
Focused Action 30 seconds
You can share Leader Pelosi's Tweet here
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→ Direct sources for Democrats:
(Shared sources and "favorite, most informative follows" are shared with the understanding readers will apply their own critical thinking to the information they consume and that the list may change at any time for any reason. #StrongerTogether does not share lightly but -- no one is perfect!)
The Democratic Party Website
C-SPAN (a good place for speeches & hearings direct source (s))
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
US Intelligence +35 yrs | NYT Bestselling Author, Navy Senior Chief. NBC/MSNBC
Contributing editor, Vanity Fair; senior writer, Newsweek; MSNBC Contributor, New York Times bestselling author
Ari Melber
MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent | Lawyer | Writer | Emmy-winning reporter | Host of#ThePoint
Ari Berman
Author: Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America | |Writer:@thenation
Thank you for Networking for Democrats today!
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(Remember 2018...)
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Curated by Gail Mountain, with occasional personal commentary, Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
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