“I believe that street action is one of those things you have to do. It’s a way to ignite the momentum of a movement.”
–Alberto Saavedra
HEAL California’s Unsung Heroes project highlights the hard work and dedication of individuals who are working – often in the background – to win Medicare-for-All in California and the nation.
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Sit down for coffee with Alberto Saavedra of Los Angeles and he’ll probably describe his life as “extremely complicated.”
The Uruguay-born, high-tech business consultant was admitted to the U.S. Air Force Academy as an allied cadet, lived in America briefly without legal status and once palled around with members of the Rolling Stones
But Saavedra, a grassroots activist and “progressive capitalist,” has long been fighting for something that he believes is uncomplicated: Medicare for All.
“This is the only country where people go bankrupt because of healthcare bills,” Saavedra, a board member of the pro-single payer group California OneCare, noted in a recent interview. “That should not happen in the richest country in the world.”
Saavedra said he explains Medicare for All like this to his friends:
“You have a health issue. You go to a doctor and you’re taken care of and you don’t have copays or pay bills or have pharmaceutical costs that will drive you into bankruptcy.”
If they ask him how they’re going to pay for it, Saavedra responds: “The same way the Canadians do, the same way the Australians do, the same way the Norwegians do.”
Republican-turned-independent
How did Saavedra, a Republican-turned-independent, come to embrace single-payer health care?
In 2007, he was working for an Indian software company in Glendale, California when he noticed some unusual activity in his office building. He learned that the California Nurses Association was protesting the health insurer Cigna, also headquartered there, over its denials to give ailing teenager Nataline Sarkisyan a liver transplant.
Saavedra started researching the issue and became enamored with the idea of a public health insurance system that would guarantee health coverage to every resident.
Cigna eventually reversed their denial but too late for Sarkisyan, 17, who died the same day.
“I believe that under single-payer, Nataline Sarkisyan would not have been denied care and she would not have died,” he said.
Saavedra was so touched by Sarkisyan’s story that he was one of the hundreds of people who attended a memorial service in her honor at a local church.
“I was curious about how someone dying because of lack of health care affected people,” he said. “I felt like this is wrong, that it shouldn’t be happening in America.”
How the single payer movement found him
So the activist and then-blogger for the progressive Daily Kos site decided to protest against the for-profit health insurance industry and rally for single-payer all on his own, with regular demonstrations in L.A.’s Woodland Hills neighborhood, where many health insurance companies were based.
“I went there with a sign that said single-payer something or other,” Saavedra recalled. “I was the only guy. Then I got joined by a fellow blogger from Daily Kos. I did it every week. I think I called them single-payer Fridays….Next thing you know all of a sudden there’s 50 people showing up to my demonstrations. I said ‘that’s great’ and I found out there was an existing single-payer movement.”
Also in 2007, Saavedra had sold a computer system to another large health insurance company in the United States. After he was invited by the company’s chief information officer to lunch, the executive revealed that they were going to use the system to deny claims.
He explained that they were looking for anything, including punctuation issues, that could be used to justify a denial. The executive also told him that they routinely denied 30 percent of all claims and they wanted to become more efficient at it.
“It confirmed everything I learned about single-payer at the time, that health insurance for profit is just bad for human beings,” Saavedra said. “I understood back then that health care is a human right.”
Following his demonstrations, Saavedra was invited to join various single-payer groups, including Healthcare for All-California, and has been active ever since.
Most recently, Saavedra said he pinned a petition calling on Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) to support a Medicare for All bill in the House on the door of the congressman’s Los Angeles office. Soon afterward, he said, the congressman came out and endorsed the bill.
“When Al hears of a street action in the works, he never hesitates. He’s there! And he’s always the best-dressed guy around — usually in a long-sleeved, button-down dress shirt and slacks or sometimes even in a suit and tie,” said Georgia Brewer, associate director at California OneCare.
“Al is one of the most committed activists in the movement. He’s a real man of action who thinks very strategically. He also has an absolutely wonderful mastery of both English and Spanish, which helps communicate our critically important message to a wider audience.”
Street action is in his blood
Saavedra is no stranger to street action. As a teenager in Uruguay, he was involved in student politics, becoming the secretary-general of the largest student union in the country. It was there that he organized his first street action, a demonstration in front of the Soviet Embassy to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Decades later in America, he demonstrated in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles against the Iraq war in 2003. It was largely the falsehoods told about the alleged weapons of mass destruction, which were used as justification for the war, that turned him away from the Republican Party, he said.
“I believe that street action is one of those things you have to do,” he said. “It’s a way to ignite the momentum of a movement.”
But it has to be done at the right time, when circumstances are ripe and when it will make a difference, he added.
As for the Medicare for All movement, Saavedra said he hopes to organize some street actions next year after it becomes clear which Democratic candidate will win the presidential primaries and whether the Senate can be flipped from Republican to Democratic.
“The right time is when something happens that catches people’s attention,” Saavedra said. “They are a key component of a movement if done at the right time. It’s grassroots, bottom-up. That’s what I’m all about.”
— Brenda Gazzar
HEAL California’s “Unsung Heroes” project highlights the hard work and dedication of individuals who are working – often in the background – to win Medicare-for-All in California and the nation.
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HEAL California is an independent news and information hub focused on the California Medicare for All movement. We feature non-partisan news, views, podcasts and videos that highlight the continuing failures of our broken healthcare system and elevate the voices of advocates and organizations fighting for change.
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