The 2024 Paris Olympics came to a close on Sunday with a passing of the baton to the United States as we await the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. One major takeaway from this year’s games? Our country’s broken health care system.
Since 1932, the Olympic Village has offered free health care to Olympic athletes and their delegations, including cardiology, orthopedics, physiotherapy, psychology, podiatry, gynecology, dental, ophthalmology, and sports medicine.
For American Olympians like Bronze medal-winning U.S. Women’s Rugby player Ariana Ramsey, this experience came as a shock. Rather than receiving treatment for injuries, Ramsey caught up on her preventative care while at the Paris Olympic Village, receiving a Pap smear, eye exam, teeth cleaning, X-rays, and a new pair of glasses.
In her own words from her viral TikTok, “America needs to do better with their health care system. There’s no reason why me, an American girl, should be so amazed by free health care.”
Her experience is not unique, as many athletes from the United States also failed to realize these services were offered by the Olympic Village, in contrast to our country’s for-profit system with endless hoops and hurdles.
The article from Sports Illustrated notes what we have long known to be true: “A 2022 study by The Commonwealth Fund found that the U.S. is the only high-income country without universal healthcare,” emphasizing how rare our system is and how far our country is behind the rest of the world when it comes to offering guaranteed health care.
Getting the care we need should not be this hard, which is why we’re fighting for our own universal health care system through Medicare for All.
Help us spread the message and continue building on our nationwide movement for Medicare for All by sharing our social media posts highlighting Ariana’s experience:
Together, we can make it so that everyone in this country — not just Olympic athletes — can receive the care they need when they need it without fear of cost.
In solidarity,
Nurses’ Campaign to Win Medicare for All
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