Dale Wolf: We Choose Healthcare for All
The following is a story about healthcare, privilege, and pre-existing conditions.
I was born over 25 weeks premature. I was placed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Short version of my long, complicated medical history: I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy.
Hydrocephalus is what doctors call it when too much fluid builds up in the cavities way far inside your brain. This would have killed me if left untreated, but it was fixed back when I was a baby. Doctors opened up my body and installed a device known as a ventriculoperitoneal shunt. The symptoms of my particular type of cerebral palsy, spastic diplegia, were dramatically decreased a long time later, when I was five years old. I had a surgery known as a selective dorsal rhizotomy.
Before I had my surgery, I couldn’t put my left foot flat. I couldn’t put two dots next to each other on a piece of paper. By the end of first grade, I did a 5K and my teachers could read my handwriting. By the end of high school, I could go hiking. I loved going kayaking. I wore muscle shirts.
High school was almost ten years ago. Last year, I worked as a political field organizer for the second time. Traditionally, field organizers are the folks who knock on doors and make phone calls and send texts and otherwise recruit volunteers day and night, handling the hard work of what is officially known as direct voter contact.
I don’t know what it’s like in a pandemic, but when I did it I engaged in an extraordinary amount of walking. I would never have been able to do that walking if not for a combination of doctors and luck.
I was lucky that my parents had health insurance. I was lucky that that health insurance was good. I was lucky that my parents could afford to take me to the hospital and get me everything I needed.
What if I wasn’t so lucky? What if my parents didn’t have health insurance? What if that health insurance was bad? What if they knew exactly what I needed and they knew how it would change my life, but they just couldn’t afford it? I don’t want to think about any of that.
These days I schedule and coordinate all sorts of fun stuff for Qasim Rashid, the Democratic nominee in Virginia’s First Congressional District. As a human rights attorney, he’s committed to fighting for people with disabilities. He is a passionate advocate for a healthcare system that would guarantee medical care for everybody. During this pandemic, he has fought for frontline healthcare workers to receive the support and equipment they so desperately need. And he’s fought for families who aren’t as lucky as mine.
My parents raised me on story after story of times that America did bold and heroic things. I never thought we were perfect or anywhere close, but I always believed in the struggle for a more perfect union. As President Obama once said, “Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
That’s why I’m excited by Qasim’s approach to healthcare.
Once upon a time, America chose to go to the moon. As a human rights attorney, Qasim makes another bold and heroic choice. He chooses to treat healthcare as a human right. He fights for it accordingly. He’s doing his best to level the playing field, and he knows how urgently this is necessary.
That’s why he supports Medicare for All, which would return choice to the American people by allowing us to choose our doctors anywhere in the country. It would make sure everyone is covered with high quality and affordable care. It would decrease the cost of prescription medications; provide comprehensive medical, vision, dental, reproductive, and mental healthcare for all; and it would protect you if you have a preexisting condition.
Qasim is fighting to protect people. His opponent has voted dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. His opponent even voted for legislation that would have eroded part of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). You can read all about it right here.
2020 marks 30 years since the ADA was signed into law, three years before I was born. A Republican president signed that law, but Qasim’s opponent does not live up to that legacy. Qasim’s opponent votes with President Trump 92.7% of the time.
The First District deserves better.
