Featuring Libby Schaaf, mayor of Oakland, California. Along with Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, Mayor Schaaf co-founded Mayors for Medicare for All, a coalition of American mayors who believe that health care is a human right. The coalition has three goals:
Create a network of mayors who will endorse Medicare for All.
Submit a formal resolution of support for Medicare for All to the U.S. Conference of Mayors for adoption and as a policy position of the conference.
Work with the next administration and Congress to adopt Medicare for All.
Why have two California mayors joined forces to launch Mayors for Medicare for All? How are American cities “laboratories for democracy?” How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected local communities? Libby Schaaf, Oakland mayor and the City Council’s former senior policy adviser for Community & Economic Development, and host Brenda Gazzar discuss how fixing America’s broken healthcare system is critical to equity, justice and decency.
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Mayors for Medicare for All: Upending the Status Quo
—– TRANSCRIPT —–
Opening MUSIC – “Talk Back” 10 seconds, fade down
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. Today we’ll talk about Mayors for Medicare for All, a new national organization that aims to combat healthcare disparities in America.
(Stinger music – 5-seconds)
Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf is joining us today. She’s teamed up with Long Beach, California Mayor Robert Garcia in launching Mayors for Medicare for All amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Welcome to Code WACK!, Mayor Schaaf.
Schaaf: Well, thank you for having me and what a great podcast to be dedicated to how wack our current healthcare system is. I couldn’t agree with you more.
Q: Thank you. I’ll tell that to my boss. She came up with the name. So tell me about Mayors for Medicare (for All), and how you got involved in this new organization and movement?
Schaaf: You know, I’m always excited when people recognize that cities are the laboratories for democracy, and that it’s where innovation happens and it’s because we are the closest to the people that we’re serving. We see the suffering on a daily basis and when Mayor Robert Garcia called me and asked if I would join him in launching this national movement for mayors to speak on behalf of their local constituents, to be really heard in the halls of Congress…. I couldn’t have been more honored.
And I was really touched because, you know, I watched Mayor Garcia go through a personal tragedy of his own losing both of his parents to COVID-19, you know, his mom, a health care worker. So it was very meaningful for me to be asked to be his partner in something that I am so passionate about. Because I can tell you if we don’t learn the lessons from COVID-19, shame on us. We are seeing every day the failure of our systems. And we have an opportunity to take these lessons, these painful lessons and do something with them. And there is nothing that is more obvious than the need for universal health coverage.
Q: Right, you’re talking about Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia who lost both his mother and I believe his stepdad, as well?
Schaaf: That’s correct.
Q: Wow. Interesting. How did you get personally involved in this issue of fighting for Medicare for All?
Schaaf: You know, it really has been during COVID, just the unbelievable loss of life, the suffering, and the unacceptable racial disparities that we’re seeing COVID just shine a bright, painful light on. When I see that black families have double the death rate of any other racial group, Latino families have quadruple the rate of infections. And, we’ve really tried to empower our amazing community-based health clinics in Oakland to stand up these free COVID testing sites, and one of the absolute tragedies that we’ve learned is that so many of our families have no “health home,” that when they come for a test because they are afraid that their loved one is going to die, simply for going out and earning a paycheck, they come and they get that free test. But what we find is that they haven’t had a doctor, a place to get vaccinations, a place to get preventative health information or resources, and everyone deserves that. The absolute fear that I have felt in the faces of mothers standing in line to get their children tested at these community testing sites will break your heart. And that’s why. It’s seeing this suffering, this fear, this lack of access, this lack of preventative resources, it is unacceptable. In a country that believes in its greatness and has so much wealth as America, it is unconscionable that we are the one of the only developed nations that does not provide universal health coverage.
And so, I believe Mayor Garcia reached out to me because he has seen me just be “hair on fire” around equity initiatives like guaranteed income and universal health care, Medicare for All, is an equity, it’s an equity issue. It is a justice issue. It is a decency issue. And so, hopefully he chose well because I am all in, and this is a moment for these kinds of transformative changes because of this crisis. People are seeing so much more clearly how deficient the current system is. And I believe that they are willing to take risks and bold steps that aren’t always palatable when things are okay, when things seem to be going well. If there is any kind of silver lining in this tragedy, it really is upending the status quo. And this is a status quo, this healthcare system, that must be upended.
Q: Thank you, Mayor Schaaf.
Find more Code WACK! episodes at ProgressiveVoices.com and on the PV app. You can also listen to Code WACK! at heal-ca.org. This podcast is powered by HEAL California, uplifting the voices of those fighting for healthcare reform around the country. I’m Brenda Gazzar.
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