Featuring Angelica Salas, longtime executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) which she transformed into a mass membership immigrant led-organization that empowers immigrants to win local, state, and national policies, advancing their human, civil and labor rights.
What healthcare policies are necessary to expand access to care to low-income people? How will these policies benefit every person in our country? What happens to the billions of dollars undocumented workers pay into Medicare and Social Security each year? Angelica Salas, executive director of CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights) and host Brenda Gazzar discuss how the pandemic has highlighted our interdependence and the need to take care of one another.
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The fight for transformative, accessible and inclusive health care for all
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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 which health care policies would benefit Latinx immigrants the most.
(Stinger music – 5-seconds)
Angelica Salas is the longtime executive director of CHIRLA, which she transformed into a mass membership, immigrant led-organization that empowers immigrants to win local, state, and national policies that advance their human, civil and labor rights.
Welcome to Code WACK!, Angelica.
Q: So what healthcare policies does CHIRLA currently support?
Salas: So we fight for health care for all at the state level and at the federal level. We believe that immigrants should be included so we have always been engaged in the fight for Medicare for All and during the fight for what is now deemed Obamacare, we were very active at the national level getting our elected officials to support it. And then, at the state level (we) have continued to do so, you know, pushing for health care for all.
We also work at the local level to ensure that all the health care programs that do exist, especially for indigent communities, that they are fully accessible by the undocumented and then continue to fight against public charge, which is an immigration policy that seeks to disqualify an individual for future Green Card status if you use safety net programs or healthcare programs for a long period of time. So we just believe that nobody should be penalized for accessing a safety net program that they need , a food program which we also see as connected to health care, or you know, access to food is about health and also of course just healthcare in general. So we just think these are punitive policies so we’ve been fighting against public charge. But also what we do is educate our community, in terms of those resources that are available for them to access health care, how we can connect them to them depending on what city, what county they live in. There’s different access points to educating people on that but always, always thinking about how we can expand health care for the poor and the undocumented.
Q: Got it. So expanding Medicare to children and young adults, regardless of their documentation status has been a key step in the effort to provide health care to the immigrant community. Given the fact that many doctors in the state won’t accept Medi-Cal, do you think that expanding Medi-Cal to more people is enough?
Salas: No, I don’t think it’s enough. I think that this is what we’re doing right now, but we believe that health care is a right, that everybody should have access to health care, that it should be easy to access, that it shouldn’t require, you know, so many prerequisites.
It shouldn’t also just depend on this idea of health care through employment because most of our folks don’t have employment, and so it’s for us, it just means that we have to create a system where anybody who needs health care should have access to health care and that this is what we have now, but the systems that exist so how can we include our folks in the systems? But then the other part is how can CHIRLA be part of fighting for healthcare systems that are transformative and accessible and inclusive and don’t leave anybody out?
Q: I see. Do you think a single-payer, Medicare-for-All type system that covers all state residents could address some of these disparities in health care coverage and access?
Salas: Absolutely. I mean we’ve always signed on, support single payer proposals both at the state level, at the federal level. So we believe that this is the avenue by which our community can have access, full access to health care, and so for our community it’s not just about immigration status, it’s about also issues of class and economics and so we really need to create programs that really think through the situation that people have, where many times it’s about the prescriptions that they have to pay for. So even sometimes it’s around how much coverage do they have, they still have to put too much money out of pocket to stay alive because the prescription drugs are so expensive.
One of the things that we see is just the lack of access to long term care so many types like for example, diabetes being one of them, but it could be a whole series of other medical issues that are long term or are catastrophic too with their accidents, etc. And they don’t have access to care or it can be so expensive for our families so it’s really important for us to fight for systems and programs that really, again, recognize health care as a human right.
Q: Got it. Why is the health and well being of Latinx communities so critical to the national economy and the overall health of our nation?
Salas: We’re human beings who deserve care just like everybody else, we’re Americans like anybody, you know, who are contributing and living in this country, and that matters. And then the other piece is we’re also contributors, even the undocumented pay so much into Medicare and the federal programs, billions and billions of dollars that are fully documented but they don’t have access to this care. So it’s also about fairness, it’s like if you pay into a system you should have access to that system, and I always believe you know in health care, it’s about interdependence and the interwoven community and this pandemic just shows it. You can’t isolate care for some and not for others because, ultimately, we all either thrive together, or we’re all left behind together or we’re all in danger together. So it’s really important that we really understand that we are one, one country, one family, one community, and that we take care of each other.
Q: Thank you, Angelica.
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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