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We all know that there's always stress when dealing with health care in this country. There's always hidden fees or some huge bill when receiving health care. I’ve decided to cover health care reform, specifically the de-privatization of health care and health insurance. The reason I chose this topic was because throughout the year in my EMT class there have been several instances where the instructors tell us about how to deal with people refusing care due to the cost. This felt so conflicting because people should never feel the need to refuse help because they can’t cover the cost, that is extremely unethical. Another reason that led me to cover this topic was learning about stocks in my personal finance class and seeing healthcare companies' stock being super high in value. I think that people in health care should be treated and paid well but they shouldn’t be making extreme profits or treating their clients like “customers”. It made me think about how much profits they are actually making and I don’t think our system should work like that.

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The root cause of our healthcare system is rooted in our Capitalistic system and history. Well into the 20th century, there just wasn’t much need for health insurance. There wasn’t much health care to buy. In 1942, during WWII with a labor shortage economists feared that businesses would keep raising salaries to compete for workers, and that inflation would be problematic. President Roosevelt prevented this by signing an Executive Order to establish the Office of Economic Stabilization. This froze wages as businesses were not not allowed to raise pay to attract workers. Businesses adapted by using benefits to compete, creating employer covered health care. After WWII the European governments were the only entity capable of offering health care with businesses and economies in ruin. The United States was in a completely different situation as the economy was booming and private entities were able to provide health care. Through the years this has formed the capitalistic system we have today were health care is a extremely expensive bill you have to deal with unless you have a good enough job to cover your health care, or maybe your health care is really janky because you don't have the best employer health care.

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I knew health insurance was expensive but I was bewildered about how expensive health care was after seeing the rates along with the deductibles. An average/below average health care plan is $550 a month! Thats $6600 dollars a year, with a $6000 dollar deductible! So if you actually get really injured or something happens thats $12600 for health care. Most jobs in in the bay pay around 70k. After taxes thats around 55k. With rent, food, and basic living expense with another 12k removed that is not sustainable. It made me think about how so little people have the money to actually afford health care. Theres few jobs that provide nice health care and many jobs provide health care but it's not good health care and it ends up being extremely expensive.

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The targets I picked were governor Gavin Newsome and our mayor Jesse Arreguín. I first chose Gavin Newsome because as the Governor he has an immense amount of power to implement change. Not only does he have that power I also believe he shares common goals of a more progressive system. My next  target is  Jesse Arreguín, the mayor could have power over the local city.

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For Governor Gavin Newsom I would have 2 major asks. The first would be the expansion of Medi-Cal as it only covers 1/3rd of California. I propose expanding Medi-Cal eligibility to include a broader range of low-income people, ensuring that more Californians have access to health care services and insurance. The second would be regulating prescription drug prices. Developing legislation to regulate the prices of prescription drugs can create affordable medication for everyone. I would ask the same thing from Jesse Arreguín because he is running for senate and he could apply the ideals of public health care and regulating pharmaceutical companies federally. Obviously at the local level he couldn’t implement my ideas.

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The three tactics I did was conducting a survey, interviewing active community members and attempting a call or meeting. I sent out my survey to the class to gather a sample of my communities information to see how our health system correlates to the people around me. I interviewed an EMT instructor in my EMT class to get insight into how they interact with health insurance and I interviewed my Canadian uncle to understand how a public health system works. I get the Mayor Student Recognition award for my leadership and I was planning on asking him for a quick meeting or call to propose my asks to him. Unfortunately there was so many people asking him questions and I didn't get a chance to talk to him so that didn't end up happening.

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The two main takeaways I learned from this project is how complicated and complex health care is and how capitalism is deeply rooted in most of our issues. Talking to my uncle gave me insight into how there is no perfect system. Having public health care makes the financial issues of our system fixed but people wouldn’t have the patience or would be upset like my uncle described. When researching about how people get healthcare it made me realize how our country has the “every person for themselves” mentality. If you don’t have money or a job that supplies for your health care then you're screwed. It reinforces this financial power hierarchy that divides the wealthy versus not wealthy. Health care is one of many examples of how the wealth gap is increasing. Something else I found interesting was that 70% of the class said that they their family got health insurance from employers.