A woman in Memphis with coronavirus recently found her entire life strewn across her lawn after being evicted from her home.
Leslie Nelson lived in a home she inherited from her mother-in-law. At the moment of her eviction, she learned about thousands of dollars of medical debt still owed on her deceased mother-in-law’s estate.1 Nelson is now homeless because of someone else’s medical debt she knew nothing about. The men who kicked her out had no concern for where she would go, how she would fight COVID-19 without a home to recover in, or how she would pay for these medical bills.
This pandemic is a wake up call for this country. It’s finally bringing to light how broken our health care system really is. This is just one example of how our for-profit system leaves people with medical bills that can crush a family and livelihoods – especially in the middle of an economic and public health crisis with millions unemployed and without medical care.
Our third installment of the COVID-19 educational webinar series, “COVID-19 and the Future of Our Health Care System,” will discuss these issues head on and help chart the path forward. Now is our opportunity to evaluate the failings of our health care system during COVID-19, how our response failed, and what can be done to both remedy our immediate response and achieve long lasting reform.
An estimated 27 million people lost their employer-sponsored health insurance during the first months of the pandemic and joined nearly 29 million who were already uninsured. Tens of millions of people right now are living without a way to see a doctor in the middle of a global pandemic — and that number is only growing.
We need Medicare for All now more than ever. Having any number of people without health care at any time – and especially during a worldwide pandemic – is unacceptable.
This same failing system is another reason why the racial disparities of COVID-19 are so egregious. Poorer rural areas and urban heath care deserts alike are facing a critical shortage of facilities and personnel, while Black and Brown communities have systematically been excluded from the preventive care and medical attention afforded to their wealthier, white neighbors — resulting in exponentially higher infection and death rates.
This webinar will provide a way to discuss how and why our health care system is failing in its response to the pandemic and provide a path to achieve the critical, long-lasting reform we need.
In solidarity,
Jasmine Ruddy
Organizer
Nurses’ Campaign for Medicare for All
1 - WREG Memphis
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