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How Medicare for All Won City Hall
Los Angeles >> Sean Broadbent knows what it takes to get the elected officials of Los Angeles — the second largest city in the United States — to formally support Medicare for All.
The 30-year-old video editor is one of four key volunteer organizers behind last month’s successful campaign to get the L.A. City Council to pass a resolution supporting the U.S. House of Representatives’ Medicare for All Act of 2019.
“It should be encouraging to anyone who feels like they don’t have a way in because they’re not an expert or someone who necessarily has lots of time to do this,” Broadbent said. “This is something you can make a passion project of and do on weeknights. You do need to be connected to other people to give you encouragement.”
Broadbent became active in the movement last year after hearing Mari Lopez of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United speak at a “pie and politics” mixer at a Pasadena church.
“I was incredibly interested, got her card and read up” on the issues, he said.
That’s largely because Broadbent’s sister was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer while uninsured. Their family was forced to start a GoFundMe page for the dental assistant and mother. They were fortunate, he said, that generous donations raised by friends allowed her to start her life-saving treatment within a month.
“A lot of people assume, myself included, that people who are working in any part of our healthcare system have health insurance themselves, that they have access to care because they are facilitating the delivery of care,” Broadbent said. However, “they themselves can be locked out of it.”
Lopez encouraged him to join forces with National Nurses United as a volunteer community organizer. After failing to drum up a desired number of signatures on a petition involving the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Broadbent set his sights on the city of Los Angeles.
He learned that the city has 99 neighborhood councils, or grassroots-level advisory bodies designed to connect residents to City Hall, and opted to start there.
Through his work with NNU, he met fellow organizers Sasha Rappaport, lead volunteer organizer for Los Angeles Forward, Cheng-Sim Lim, a film curator and cancer survivor, and Craig Scott, a member of the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV.
These passionate volunteers made presentations before some 20 neighborhood councils, asking them to urge councilmembers to approve a pro-Medicare for All resolution. Many of them did.
“Being able to work in communities and share stories and build a grassroots movement in Los Angeles through Neighborhood Councils was what really allowed us the amplification of this message to City Hall,” Rappaport explained.
After City Council President Herb J. Wesson Jr. introduced the motion in August, the volunteers got numerous Neighborhood Councils to submit community impact statements on how Medicare for All would positively affect their communities.
Among them was the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, which noted that the city is dealing with a massive housing and homelessness crisis.
“Healthcare and housing are intrinsically tied together and it is of utmost importance to work towards finding solutions to help all Angelenos flourish,” the letter stated. “Universal, single-payer, healthcare is a needed step in that direction.”
On Nov. 5, the day of the vote, a pro-Medicare for All rally was held on the steps of L.A.’s iconic City Hall and dozens of activists filled Council Chambers. Some 30 people spoke in favor of the resolution, with no dissenters.
Susie Shannon, who lost her employer-based healthcare last year, was among those who shared her story. When she was hired by Bernie Sanders’ campaign a few months ago, she used her new health insurance to see a doctor and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Because doctors caught it early, she had a successful surgery — and avoided chemotherapy and radiation.
“I really feel like the luckiest person in the world but the point here is (that) we shouldn’t have to rely on luck to save lives,” Shannon told the council. “We shouldn’t have to rely on employment to save lives. We shouldn’t have to rely on wealth to save lives.”
The City Council passed the Medicare-for-All resolution 10 to 1, with four council members absent.
The activists were bolstered, they said, by support from organizations including National Nurses United along with several locals who had been fighting for single-payer health insurance for years.
“That whole day was such an amazing feeling,” Broadbent recalled. “LA is a huge city so there is no way this would have happened without the work of many dedicated activists.”
So what’s next on the agenda? Broadbent and Rappaport would like to focus on getting resolutions of support from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the City of San Fernando. They also want Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Panorama City, to endorse the House bill.
“We expect to use this political will… in Southern California to show that this is something that matters and affects all Angelenos,” Rappaport said.
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