Health care rally draws a coalition outside Yale School of Medicine

June 29--NEW HAVEN -- Although the American Health Care Act, a federal bill meant to repeal and replace the current health care laws, was beaten back this week as U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delayed the vote until after July 4 facing unpopularity with the public and some members of his own party, a coalition of progressive groups rallied outside the Yale School of Medicine to prepare themselves for the sequel.

Melody Oliphant, a Women's March Connecticut Organizer and post-graduate research fellow at Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center who assembled the groups for the rally, said the aim of Wednesday's action was "to advocate for a positive vision of what the health care system should look like."

"We want to lift up as many voices as possible," she said.

Owing to the range of perspectives among progressives in the area, Oliphant said the positive vision might not be a unified one on matters like moving to single-payer health insurance or the continuance of the ACA.

"It means something different to everyone," she said. "With a system as complex as the health care system, it's difficult to articulate a perfectly united vision or find one succinct and catchy slogan that will sum up the health care system."

Among those on the roster of speakers and the more than 100 people assembled, the single payer system, and its attendant slogans "Medicare for all" and "Health care is a human right," was the more popular vision.

Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Connecticut Working Families Party, was the first to mention single payer, to cheers.

"This legislation is murder," Farrell said, adding that Republicans in Congress are aware of how draconian the AHCA is. "It's for tax breaks. It's for a terrible, terrible reason."

According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, 22 million Americans will lose their health insurance in the next decade under the AHCA. Of $765 billion in tax cuts in 10 years under the proposed legislation, the top 20 percent of earners would receive 64 percent of those savings, according to the Tax Policy Center.

"This is possibly the greatest shift of wealth upwards to the wealthy I've ever seen," Farrell said. "I don't care if you kill us today, or next week or next month; if they pass this, it's all the same."

Local 34 UNITE HERE Chief Steward Barbara Vereen said the ACA must be fixed. She mentioned higher premiums, higher copays and higher deductibles included in the ACA, which drew boos from the crowd.

"No American should have to make a decision between paying for health care and paying for groceries," Vereen said.

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy of the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, wore a sandwich board of self-portraits taken by people around the state whose health care would be affected by the AHCA. Those portraits were hung on a clothesline outside the office of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., who activists believe could be a swing vote on the AHCA, by visually demonstrating that "lives are on the line."

She said one of the questions she gets most often is if the photos she wore were of people with "pre-existing conditions," or various reasons why private health care providers may deny coverage. To that, she said the AHCA affects everyone in the state and the nation.

"The ACA needs some fixing. The entire health system needs fixing," she said, but to repeal the law instead of taking the time to "tinker" with it is "cruel."

"There are a lot of good things happening under the ACA and just as many improvements to be made," she said.

Justin Farmer, a Southern Connecticut State University student and self-described democratic socialist, said polling reflects that the American public supports a single payer system.

"Health care is under attack for tax cuts for a few people when we should expand health insurance to cover more people," he said.

The ACA, he said, is "not perfect," but it would be best to look at it thoughtfully instead of dismantling something that took six years to implement in one year.

Mary-Jane Kenley, from Branford, arrived with a sign resembling a headstone saying the ACA saved her son's life because of its support for addiction services.

"My son would've had no insurance and would've died," she said. "If we can save one person, we can save a lot more."

Another common theme among the day's speakers was a consistent gender component, with women advocating for reproductive health and abortion access.

Many signs, most of them from NARAL Pro-Choice America, had messages such as "Trust Women."

Director of Public Policy, Advocacy and Strategic Engagement at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England Gretchen Raffa said protests that led to McConnell delaying the vote "protected Planned Parenthood patients for one more day, but we can't let up."

"This bill is the worst bill for women in a generation," she said. The bill effectively makes "being a woman a pre-existing condition," she said.

She said under the current health care system, as an employee and patient of Planned Parenthood, she and other queer women can be guaranteed safe medical care.

"That's why I will not sit by quietly," she said.

Liz Linehan, a state representative for Cheshire, Wallingford and Southington, said the bill is a "travesty against women, spreading across this country like the cancer they don't want to cover."

She said as a cosponsor of Senate Bill 586, she would like to see Connecticut ensure mandated health benefits for women and children.

"We need to get this in as quickly as possible, as strong as possible," she said.

Fellow cosponsor state senator Mae Flexer said women in Connecticut must be trusted to make their own health care decisions.

She said there was a lot of great initial energy from the grass roots level with people calling their representatives, but "the pressure has waned a little bit."

"Keep it up and protect health care as a human right for all Americans," she said.

Linehan said the spectre of the AHCA was personal for her, as her husband's cancer may have returned after 15 years.

"For me, this is personal. For me, this fight is for my husband," Linehan said. "And I won't shut up until this bill is dead."

Despite the radical threads running through many speakers' comments, some said they enjoy the ACA mostly as is. Democratic state Rep. Sean Scanlon, who represents Branford and Guilford, said he sees attempts to criticize Obamacare, or the ACA, as failing as part of a Republican plot to spread doubts.

"The only reason it's 'failing' is because they're trying to kill it," he said. "Don't let anyone tell you it's failing."

He said his mother, who raised him as a single parent, always sacrificed her own care to provide for him. Her first time receiving coverage, he said, was through the ACA exchange.

"Passing this bill will be a disaster," he said. "That's not America. That's not what we believe in America. We should be giving more health care to people."

Rachel Botts, a mother of a child with a chronic illness, said she and her husband conservatively planned and controlled for everything in life, until a genetic mutation changed their lives. Her daughter struggled to breathe and spent multiple weeks in and out of hospitals. Between the nursing costs, the costs of medical equipment and the costs of nutrition, Botts incurs monthly costs of about $21,000 before insurance. It is only because of a Medicaid waiver program that she was able to give her daughter medical support without going bankrupt, she said.

Republicans want to paint folks benefiting from medical insurance as "nameless, faceless abusers of the system," a title she refuses.

Similarly, Melissa Marshall, a disability activist, said she is sometimes kept awake at night wondering which of her activist friends might die under a massive health care repeal. She said her disability and now her gender are both considered pre-existing conditions under the proposed health care law.

Even though a projected 22 million will eventually lose coverage under the proposed system, those were not all who were considered at the rally.

Kaitlyn Shake, a women's health nurse, said 28 million are current uninsured, and she wanted to recognize those people as well. She said nurses are "on the front lines of health care" and get to meet those involved in the health care system each day.

"We work tirelessly -- I am tired -- but we do it because we love what we do," she said on behalf of nurses. "The ACA needs us. Yes, single payer is important, but we need to preserve this bill. Health care is a team effort."

Carlos Moreno, interim executive director for the CT Working Families Party, said Wednesday's rally was an example of a united progressive front, and he was looking forward to more energy and activism.

Similarly, IV Staklo, an organizer with the local Party for Socialism and Liberation handing out pamphlets for the People's Congress of Resistance, said the cause was so important to so many people that there was solidarity among the groups.

"I think these are sentiments people are having now because they're scared of losing the basic provisions of the law," they said.

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