The state of healthcare — especially for children — is heartbreaking, said an African-American female pediatrician who wants to be identified as L.A. for this article.
For this reason, she will be voting for Bernie Sanders in the Missouri presidential primary election on Tuesday, March 10.
“It’s high time we’ve had healthcare for everyone,” said L.A. “I’m tired of seeing children not getting treatments or having to jump through hoops to get treatment that they need. It’s disconcerting that this is something happening in 2020.”
L.A. attended the Conversation of Color event held by the Sanders campaign on Sunday, March 8. While other Democratic candidates have talked about a “public health option,” she said that doesn’t go far enough for what we’re facing in 2020.
“A public option was where we should have been over a decade ago, and now we’re at the point of crisis from a healthcare standpoint,” she said.
L.A. explained that if she has really sick children who need a specific kind of medicine or treatment, the insurance companies won’t approve them until she has exhausted all other cheaper treatments. The time it takes to try other options could be a detriment to the child’s health. For hospital stays, the insurance companies want the children to go home soon after procedures. And as Medicaid gets less and less funding, the children get less and less care, she said.
“It’s not something people think about because they might not have experienced it,” she said. “It’s basically every day of our work.”
Among the African-American Sanders supporters that the St. Louis American interviewed at the Conversation of Color event and at the Monday rally, healthcare was the main reason they decided to choose Sanders over the other main candidate Joe Biden. A close second reason was Sanders’ student-debt cancellation program.
Dante Foster is a 27-year-old postal worker, who said his mother is a diabetic, and medicine is a big financial burden for her.
“He’s the first candidate I’ve ever come to rally for; he was really speaking to me,” Foster said. “His main thing with Medicare For All. I believe healthcare is a human right, and us being the only [industrialized] country not having it, it’s like saying we don’t have the right to live.”
Foster said he voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election, but “reluctantly.” Sanders is the first presidential candidate he would be excited to vote for, he said.
On Monday, March 9, Sanders held a rally at the Stifel Theatre in downtown St. Louis, where nearly every seat was filled. Several local elected officials stumped for Sanders, including St. Louis City Treasurer Tishaura Jones, state Rep. Rasheen Aldridge and Alderwoman Megan Ellyia Green.
Sanders came out quoting Nelson Mandela, saying, “‘Everything seems impossible until it is done.’ And what happens is human beings end accepting the status quo unnecessarily. We are told by Congress what our options are. We are told by the media what our options are. And sometimes we forget to take a hard look at what goes on around us and where we want to go as a nation and as a people.”
Sanders spoke about his policy proposals: the Green New Deal to address climate change; Medicare for All; College for All; Housing For All; expanding Social Security, expanding background checks for gun owners and other programs.
Art Johnson is a 21-year-old education major at University of Missouri—St. Louis, who will be voting in a presidential primary for the first time. He felt a “moral obligation” to attend the rally and support Sanders.
“We have an opportunity for a progressive to move forward,” Johnson said. “With the results of Super Tuesday, there’s more of a sense of urgency and also with all the chaos that Trump has caused.”
Sanders’ national surrogate Cori Bush got the crowd roaring before Sanders came out on stage at the Stifel Theatre.
“In 2015, he was saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ when other people were calling us ‘terrorists,’ and other candidates were saying ‘All Lives Matter,” Bush said, who is a nurse and Ferguson activist challenging Congressman Wm. Lacy Clay in August.
At the Conversation of Color, Bush said that she’s felt “invisible” as a dark-skinned black woman throughout her life, no matter what she did.
“I think about the work that we did in Ferguson, as much as we tried to do to get our voices, not much happened until other people joined,” Bush said.
It wasn’t until the Latinx, white, Palestinian and other communities stepped in that Ferguson became a powerful movement, she said, and that unity and strength in building community is exactly what she is seeing in the Sanders campaign.
“We only have today and tomorrow to make history,” Bush said, urging people to volunteer. “This is our moment, and we’ve got to take it. I know you may be tired, but let me tell you how tired you’ll be when you have the wrong person in office for another four years.”
