Featuring Mariana Pineda, a New York teacher, single mom and Medicare for All activist pulling back the curtain on the campaign for the NY Health Act. Why, on the heels of a devastating pandemic, did the Democratic-controlled New York Legislature take a pass on Medicare for All?
This is part two of a two-part series.
Did NY Dems drop the ball on Medicare for All — again?
—– TRANSCRIPT —–
Welcome to Code WACK!, your podcast on America’s broken healthcare system and how Medicare for All could help. I’m your host, Brenda Gazzar.
Why is special education teacher Mariana Pineda fighting for The New York Health Act? Why has it been so challenging to make the act, which would give all New Yorkers comprehensive health care a reality? We spoke to Mariana, an organizer, mom and COVID long-hauler, to get her up-close perspective.
Welcome to Code WACK! Mariana.
Pineda: Thank you.
Q: Last episode you shared some of your health struggles since you were diagnosed with COVID more than a year ago. How are you doing today and what challenges are you dealing with when it comes to your health insurance?
Pineda: I still can’t go for long walks without my walker. When I brush my hair, my hands get red and hot and swollen and it becomes painful to hold the hairbrush and my arms become heavy and it becomes difficult to brush my own hair. But the insurance company still has not given me a home health aide. In March, I went back into the hospital. I was admitted for three days for exacerbated asthma and when I was discharged, the hospital did set me up with homecare so for an entire month, this is now 11 months post-COVID, and I am now … homebound for a month with in-home skilled nursing and in-home PT and that was actually really helpful, but then as soon as the month was over, they took that all away and so the progress that I was making with the in-home PT, they didn’t switch me to outpatient PT they just took the PT away all together. So now I have to do all of the exercises on my own without a second adult there monitoring my blood pressure and my heart rate, and my breathing and able to help me if I get into distress, so that makes me very reluctant to want to exercise on my own.
Q: I’m so sorry! You’ve been actively campaigning for the passage of the New York Health Act, the state’s single payer healthcare bill, which wasn’t even brought to a vote this last session. How do you feel about that?
Pineda: Unfortunately, the Democratic Party does not have the people’s back when it comes to the New York Health Act, and Medicare for All, as we’ve seen. Right here on Long Island, we had six Democratic senators, and prior to the Democrats having the majority, all of the Democrats on Long Island were cosponsors of the New York Health Act, and then lo and behold, we flipped the Senate. We had the majority in the Assembly, and we had a Democratic governor, and suddenly Todd Kaminsky, and John Brooks, two Democratic senators on Long Island who had been longtime cosponsors, suddenly withdrew support when the Senate had a majority. Isn’t that curious?
It’s been very disappointing, especially now where the legislative session ended last week. I’ve been doing this since 2016 and for the first time, we had enough cosponsors to bring the bill to a vote and the Democrats didn’t do it. The Democrats have the majority in the Assembly, in the Senate, and we have a Democratic governor, and we had enough co-sponsors to pass the New York Health Act. We could have been the first state to have single-payer universal health care, and the Democrats — color me surprise — dropped the ball yet again in the middle of a global health pandemic. But tell me again why Republicans are so terrible and Trump is the boogeyman when every time we support Democrats, they keep shooting us in the foot, and then we keep supporting them so I don’t know what the solution is but I’m deeply, deeply disappointed.
Q: Got it. What about the speaker of the New York State Assembly, Carl Heastie?
Pineda: Carl Heastie we’ve been Venmo-ing him, sending him Venmo requests. I sent him one for the $115 that I owe Good Samaritan Hospital for my emergency room copays that as a unemployed disabled but not receiving disability, former public school teacher, simply can’t afford. But he didn’t respond to that one. So we sent him a Venmo request for the $165,000 that the hospital billed my insurance company for emergency surgery to remove six blood clots from my lungs post-COVID and an ICU stay and he didn’t respond to that either, so I sent him a Venmo request for the over $12,000 that, my friends raised in a GoFundMe to cover my Cobra and probably later today because it’s my birthday and I’m you know feeling frisky I’m gonna send him another one for the $3,000 a month that we were paying for my COBRA before the Democrats finally did one halfway decent thing and, you know, waived COBRA for the next couple of months.
Q: Right, the government is paying for laid-off workers to keep their COBRA through September as part of a stimulus package that was signed this year. So what happens now?
Pineda: Now fortunately, you know, I don’t have to worry about Cobra, but we have a bigger fight and we have the New York Health Act and Medicare for All, and so I’m hoping that everybody who, who has followed my story will take the time to learn more about at the state level the New York Health Act and how very, very close we were this session. I know California got pretty close too and in my vision, California and New York both pass their state-based bills, and then like bookends, it just spreads across the country, and by the time we get enough states to pass their own state legislation, the federal government, our lovely Congress critters will open their eyes and realize we really need Medicare for All, because employer-sponsored health insurance, a health insurance that is tied to your spouse or your parent that imprisons people.
I know so many women who would desperately like to get out of their marriages, but they don’t because of the health insurance either from their spouse for themselves or for their kids, and they’re afraid to exit these sometimes dangerous but very often harmful relationships, and they stay there just for health insurance. You should never have to sleep with somebody, or stay married to somebody, just for health insurance, and by not passing the New York Health Act, that is exactly what several of our Long Island senators, and all of our Democratic New York state senators have doomed more women to, and the same with this employer relationship.
Q: So some people say part of the reason that the New York Health act died was that public employee unions opposed it. How do you feel about this?
Pineda: You hear a lot of pushback from labor unions like my own personal union, I bought it to my union president and my union rep and they refused to even bring it to a vote because it was too political for my school district local union, but we saw that UFT, the New York City teachers union, actively impeded efforts to pass the New York Health Act, which I don’t understand because as a public school teacher who works with special education students in overwhelmingly Black and Latino neighborhoods, where many kids also are food insecure or shelter insecure, Medicaid will only give you one pair of eyeglasses every two years. Now, imagine if you’re a little boy with ADHD. Do you really think that you’re going to keep that one pair of glasses intact for two whole years? Probably not and if you break it, you’re SOL because your parents can’t afford to get you new ones, and now me as a special education teacher with this hyperactive student who can’t see the board, what is that going to do for me? And what is that going to do for the 28 other kids that have to share the room, and try to learn when this one kid has now checked out, because he can’t see the board and he can’t get new glasses.
You know our ability to learn and to perform well at work is based on our health. If we’re sick, we’re not going to be good little workers and what will happen to the economy, then, and if our children are sick, how are they going to learn so our big campaign for this summer — I’m very excited — we are doing healthy students learn better and we are targeting the PTAs and the teachers’ unions and the boards of education, and all of the parents and all of the parent groups and youth groups and helping them realize that the New York Health Act would have so much benefit on school districts for so many reasons.
We looked at how much the West Babylon School District pays in health insurance for their employees, and we did the math of how much the district would pay with the New York Health Act and how much the teachers would pay for the New York Health Act and everybody would save money. And now imagine if every single public school in New York was saving significant amounts of money through the New York Health Act. Think if every municipal government was saving significant amounts of money with the New York Health Act. There was a study that came out that showed that our property taxes could be lowered. Our school taxes could be lowered. So yes, our taxes would go up for health care but we would get rid of copays and premiums and deductibles, and what we would pay in taxes would be less than what we’re already paying. So, even the staunchest fiscal conservative, if they sit down and look at the math in an unbiased way, they realize that even if you don’t care about human rights, even if you are just immoral, you just don’t care, if you look at the numbers, it makes economic sense.
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