If you mandate vaccines then give us Medicaid for All!

Governor Kate Brown has mandated that all Executive Branch State Employees well be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine by October 18th. She cites the recent spike in cases related to the new Delta variant and the prediction that “Oregon could be as many as 500 staffed hospital beds short of what will be needed to treat patients hospitalized for any reason by September.” We have heard this refrain from government and health care officials since the start of the pandemic. Our hospitals can’t handle the burden.

While in the service I found myself in an Emergency room in Alberta Canada on a Friday night. There was only one other patient in the ER. I asked the nurse if it was usually this slow. She laughed and said, “Dear in Canida everyone has a doctor so you don’t have to go to the emergency room unless it’s an emergency” and their in lies the rub.

Our health care system is overburdened because we do not give people health care so when they get sick with little things, they can’t simply go to their doctor they instead wait until the issue becomes an emergency and then go to the ER. The American Health Care System works great if you are rich and the system is not strained by something like a pandemic. But most working-class Americans know our health care system sucks. To many people have no health care coverage and even more have coverage they can not afford to use. What good is having the best doctors if you can’t afford to take your child to them when they are sick.

We know that 1/3 of the people who did of COVID only died because they didn’t have access to health care. If state and federal government want to mandate vaccines, they should also provide Medicaid for all.

During this pandemic they gave trillions to banks and forging countries, money they could have used to provide health care to every American and remember they take Medicaid taxes out of your pay check so this is not a freebee, this is something the politicians on both the right and the left are denying you so the insurance companies, and drug companies can continue to steel our money and provide us substandard or no health care.