COVID Lessons for the Middle Class
As a country we have learned many lessons from COVID in 2020. I think the most important though is that the middle and upper class has finally had a taste of what the poor and young adults in our society have known all too well. Being ill without healthcare is frightening, expensive and deadly. Having a job without healthcare benefits is living on the edge between living with a roof over your head, a hot meal in you and your family’s belly and a warm bed to crawl in at night or living on the street, in a cold, wet tent and unsure of where your next meal may come from….. let alone your healthcare.
COVID has taught our once thriving middle and upper class that they are only a job loss away from losing that precious insurance that you really never thought of because, well, you really didn’t ever think you would need it anyway. But it was there, just in case and you never really appreciated the sense of security that it provided…until now. You can’t really teach that lesson to the very rich because, well really, you just can’t hurt a group of people who even during a pandemic continue to increase their profits to the tune of billions every quarter..
I have heard it said that 5% of our population consumes 80% of the health care in the US and so most Americans never really give a second thought about what it might be like to fear getting sick, fear going to the doctor or to their local Emergency room or cringe at the thought of what their medical bill might be. There are now many more who have now learned that lesson or at least felt that aching fear in their gut!
For years there has been a small collective of activists who have been fighting for true healthcare reform. Fighting to finally correct our unjust healthcare system. A system that preys on the poor and the unlucky. They have been saying the same thing over and over. Our profit-first healthcare system is wasteful, it does not encourage cost reduction, it does not promote quality of care, it does not lead to better outcomes than what the rest of the developed world enjoys. It preys on the least among us. It preys on those that most of us in healthcare have vowed to serve and to protect.
Those activists have not been able to really make any headway into “fixing our broken healthcare system”. We have come to the belief that what we really need is a “mass movement”. We have had in the past too many people in that comfortable zone who don’t think that the problems affecting the poor and their millennial children are real. You know, your child who just can’t seem to find a job with proper benefits, because obviously they aren’t looking hard enough, or if they just work a little harder with their company they’ll be able to move from that gig position to a “benefited position”. But then they don’t make their quota for one month and boom, that “gig” job is gone, and they are starting all over again. And that is exactly how the 1% want the game to be played.
We have come to the realization that if there is ever to be real change in our healthcare it must come from a mass movement. A movement that is growing ever larger now by the influx of 17,000,000 Americans who are now in that uncomfortable zone. Americans who are now willing to fight for themselves, their children and their neighbors. 17,000,000 Americans with a new pre-existing condition.
COVID has exposed the errors in our ways. And for that I have to thank COVID. It’s an expensive lesson for us to learn. Too many Americans have suffered and died to teach the rest of us this important lesson. We need to swallow our pride and accept that there is a more just way to do healthcare. Expanded and Improved Medicare for All has recently been shown by our US Congressional Budget Office that we could save our country 650 billion dollars a year! How much is over 300,000 lives worth to us? How many warm roofs and full bellies will 650 billion dollars buy for our families, friends and neighbors. Is it enough to spur you into becoming part of the mass movement for healthcare justice?
Find out where you can join a local group in your area that is fighting for healthcare justice at OnePayerStates.org.
Kathryn Lewandowsky, BSN, RN
One Payer States, Inc., Treasurer
Whole Washington, Inc., Board chair 2019/2020
