Los Angeles teenager Elvia Mendez plays the saxophone and cello, breezes through her math classes and is an enthusiastic environmental advocate.

Most recently, she has become a champion of another hot-button, national issue: Medicare for All.

It all started when she volunteered to be a group leader for a civil rights project at her high school, Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, in the city of San Fernando. The daughter of Mexican-born immigrants felt compelled to explore the nuanced issue of healthcare access.

“I want (health care) to be more accessible to people who can’t afford it,” Elvia, 17, said. “There are people that have some sort of health care and even then, they are afraid to go to hospitals because they’re afraid to pay a huge portion of (the cost.)”

While Elvia had heard about Medicare for All, she had never looked into what it would entail before the project. When she started reading online about how U.S. health care compares to other developed countries, which cost less and often have better health care, she realized “how big of an issue it is.” Medicare for All, or single-payer health insurance, would ensure that every resident in the U.S. has comprehensive health coverage regardless of socio-economic or employment status. In April, Elvia attended an American Civil Liberties Union conference in Sacramento, where speakers tackled the difficulties some face in accessing health care. She learned, for example, that the University of California San Francisco had been planning to expand a partnership with a Catholic hospital chain that denies healthcare access to transgender individuals.  (UCSF later dropped those plans after concerns were raised.)

“After that, I started looking more at what California could do,” the teen said. Once she settled on her topic, teacher Nicole Mohr – a project leader — encouraged her to find out whether the students’ local congressional  representative supported Medicare for All bills in Congress. 

Elvia was surprised to learn that her Democratic congressman, Rep. Tony Cárdenas, had not come out one way or another on the issue.

A Community Issue

“It’s shocking since our community, people from my school are from low-income families and households,” Elvia said. “We live in such a great state. Everyone should at least have some access to healthcare or at least know what they have access to.”

After not getting much response, Elvia organized a rally in front of Cárdenas’ office in May that attracted not only her project team members but advocates from other organizations, including National Nurses United and Health Care for All-California.

“At first, it was pretty nerve-wracking…I had been to a rally. I had never co-hosted a rally. Betty Doumas-Toto (from Health Care For All-California) really helped us with getting more people to attend.”

At the event, Elvia was relieved to see other advocates arrive and hear drivers loudly honking their horns in support. The students came equipped with signs and they even got coverage from ABC7 journalists.

“I felt it was a good learning experience for all,” she said. “There is something  teenagers can do. We can play an active role in our politics as well. A lot of teens will be able to vote in 2020.” Mohr, who also attended, said she was “really, really proud” of Elvia. “It was one of the best student-planned projects I’ve seen… She really reached out to the right partners. She found people who cared about what she cared about, and her group was passionate about it. Her entire group showed up. Everyone was there at the rally. They had good signs. They knew what they were doing.”

Mohr later added: “(Elvia) knows more about healthcare laws than most of my friends in their 30s and she can’t vote.”

Too scared to go to the hospital

At the rally, the congressman’s staff finally agreed to let four students inside to speak with them.  Elvia said one of her peers told them that his mother once injured her hand but “was too scared to go to the hospital” because she didn’t have health insurance. Another peer shared that he had to get a job after he was hospitalized and his mother struggled to pay the ensuing bills. 

“When he told me about it, it was kind of eye-opening,” Elvia said. “There are issues not just with people online but with people that go to school with me and they’re my friends, so it’s kind of crazy,” she said.

Cardenas’ staff told them that the congressman was not there but that they would follow-up to schedule a meeting with him.  Elvia said she never did hear back from Cardenas’ staff despite her reaching out via email.  

So what’s in store for this young activist’s future?

Elvia, the youngest of four siblings, is angling to be the first in her family to get a  college degree. In the near future, the teen hopes to continue promoting Medicare for All after she gets “back into the school groove” following the summer break. Meanwhile, she’s been watching how presidential hopefuls are tackling health care. She agrees that Medicare for All should include every resident in the nation, regardless of one’s immigration status.

“It’s promoting equality for all, which is what the United States stands for,” she said. “It’s also going to be hard in a way …With ICE (Immigration and Customs  Enforcement) raids going on, it would take some time for (undocumented  immigrants) to come out. It would be putting them in a system that can be used to target them.”