I was in medical school when the ACA passed, and I was so grateful that we had an American president that was willing to jump on this issue. But as it got negotiated, I realized that the broader promise of health care in America as we were reading about the history of the unmet promise of health care — during the Truman years, and then again during the LBJ years, and then again under the leadership of folks like Ted Kennedy, and then under the Obama administration — we still have yet to make good on that promise.
I realized that I did not want to be a part of a system that did not provide the best medical care to people who need it the most.
As I went through my medical education, I came to realize, training in hospitals in New York, which are some of the best, most prestigious hospitals in the world — these hospitals too often are incentivized to do all they can to ignore the plight of folks in their communities, while flying in people from all over the world to get access to the most technologically advanced care for people who can afford it. I realized that I did not want to be a part of a system that did not provide the best care to people who need it the most right in their backyard. And so I’ve been an advocate for Medicare for All, frankly, since medical school.
A lot of my work in public health has been about recognizing that in our system, the inability to provide health care for people who need it is part and parcel of our failure to provide preventive services for all of us. I think we need to build a system that guarantees every single person the care that they need and deserve and also invests in the means of keeping us healthy in the first place.
Auteur: Abdul El-Sayed
