Tag: healthcare

Delays in Healthcare?

“If we do universal healthcare, we’ll have to wait MONTHS to get an appointment!”

Have you heard that one?
I have a few answers.

First, we wait months NOW. By taking away the power of the mega corporations who now control access, we will actually shorten wait times and travel distance.

When a corporation makes a decision about opening a clinic or hospital, or whether to keep on open, they make the decision based on the bottom line. What decision will put the most money into the pockets of the share-holders.

The wait times and quality of care don’t enter into their discussion unless it affects the bottom line. If massive layoffs of nurses, closing rural clinics, and cutting staff makes sense to the bottom line, that is what they will do.

If they decide to put one RN on the whole floor and staff the rest with CNAs, that is what they will do.

Imagine taking that power away from the corporation, and putting it in the hands of elected boards and experts who make decisions based upon quality care?

Second, The assumption is that when healthcare doesn’t cost the people, but is universal – then the masses will want healthcare and that will bog down the system.

You can see the minds of people working. A white man has to wait for care, and he sees the brown people and the black people in the waiting room. His mind will go to blame, but he puts the blame in the wrong place.
Rather than blame the system of healthcare that we have in this country, he resorts to his racism. “If it weren’t for THESE people clogging up the system, I’d be in and out.”

Yes, I’ve actually heard that. The assumption is that POC of indigenous people, or Mexican people don’t deserve quality healthcare. Their children aren’t as important as mine. They’re all freeloaders.

Or perhaps the poor mother, whose kid is sick and she has to go to the ER or clinic because she can’t afford anywhere else. Will we just call her a freeloader, or a “welfare queen”?

Inherent in all these ideas is that there are some people more deserving of healthcare than other people.
Whether it is white people, male people, employed people, healthy people, people with money – however you want to divide the country up. One group deserves healthcare. The other does not.

I reject the idea that some people do not deserve healthcare. This is why I support universal, free healthcare. Whether a child lives or dies should not be based upon whether that child is in the “in” group or the “out group”.

The fact that a person is human and worthy of inherent dignity is enough for them to deserve access to healthcare.

“All humans are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This ideal has not been realized, either in 1776, or today. But throughout our history there have been “progressives” who believe in making “progress” towards that goal.

They have almost always been mistakenly called socialists. Lies travel faster than truth.

But I am honored to count myself as among them.

The myth of the “lazy liberal”

“Why don’t liberals just get jobs”

This lie has been spread since Reagan’s racist “Welfare queens” comment.

It has about as much truth as Haitians eating pets.

Six months after 1-6, a man told me that it couldn’t have been conservatives rioting. “They all have jobs. It’s the liberals that don’t have jobs.”

But lies aren’t harmless. They cause untold suffering and pain.

It was the lies about immigrants that inflicted brutal, untrained thugs with military weapons on our civilians.
And it was the lies about “welfare queens” and “lazy libs” that is causing our economic collapse.

We fight the lies, then we build a better Minnesota.

I’ve been in human resources and management for most of my life. I have never met these “lazy liberals”. Almost everyone I meet is desperate to work, eager to earn enough to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

No one ever wants to spend a day in the unemployment office. They aren’t there because they are lazy. They are there because they are desperate.

And it is also true that people get discouraged – they have to work two or three jobs to keep healthcare, or get the medicine they need, or afford gasoline or daycare. And they watch as the companies they slave for get richer and richer.

The solution is NOT to starve people into compliance. The solution is to create healthy environments where humans thrive, have time to take a weekend off, can afford to go out for dinner every once in a while, and keep a roof over their heads without fear.

I propose:
Universal healthcare. If billions aren’t lining the pockets of the insurance companies and health conglomerates, it can go back into labor, saving money for everyone.

Free childcare for working families. The biggest hindrance I see, especially for women, is the cost of childcare. We can fix that and both business and workers can focus on other things knowing that the children are cared for.

Mandatory paid days to care for sick children. You shouldn’t have to lose your job when your child gets sick.

We can create a far better Minnesota for everyone, but it will take courage to go up against the billionaires who won’t give up without a fight.

Health care concerns

I have a concern about healthcare in rural areas. All I can do is speak from my own experience.
As many of you know, I came from Northern California, north of Sacramento in the Central Valley. The dominating health network was Sutter Health.

A family member had a very rare virus that destroyed much of her brain tissue. The emergency services she received at UC Davis was wonderful and lifesaving. But she needed continuous care AFTER she was released.

Because of her disability, the only possible insurance available was MediCal, the California equivalent of MNSURE.

In all of Northern California, there was only ONE neurologist who worked for a system that accepted MediCal. He was two hours away.

There were no physical therapists, no occupational therapists, and only one clinic for MediCal patients, and they only did primary care.

This was one of the many reasons we moved to Minnesota.

And now that same health network just purchased the Allina system in Faribault.

Yes, I heard that they are “pouring 2 billion dollars” into Minnesota health. But who will benefit? I’m pretty sure it won’t be those who need it the most. We lived it in California.

Recently, I needed blood work done for a wellness program offered through my employer. They contracted with a company that only offers blood draws in the cities. An hour away. They would not allow me to go one mile and get blood work done, because they weren’t contracted with them.

This is a harbinger of things to come.

Corporates contracting with each other is good – for manufacturing, building, retail goods and services, etc. But NOT for healthcare. The corporate contracts are NEVER beneficial for the patients or the professionals who work so hard for so little.

Please listen to me. We are just one board decision away from excluding all MNSURE patients from ongoing care at Allina. And they’ve done it before.

What protections for patients are in place with this merger?

They will certainly continue to take emergency patients, because the current laws force them to. But there is already talk in the GOP about forced institutionalization of disabled persons. They really aren’t going to ensure that occupational health, physical therapy, mental health and counseling are available for those who need it the most.

The party the brought us screwworm, measles, diarrhea lettuce, and COVID certainly is NOT going to protect patients’ rights to care.

Neither will the huge corporations that are moving in.
It is part of the strategy. Bankrupt the systems, then swoop in and buy them out at pennies on the dollar.
Family farms, health clinics, what will be next?

It isn’t too late to stop this.

Who is Sam Powell

My name is Sam Powell, and I am running as a DFL candidate for Senate District 19 in Minnesota. I am seeking your endorsement.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I was born and raised in California in an extremely conservative environment. My father was a pastor of a congregation that was Christian Nationalist, before it became a household word. In that congregation, the seeds were sown which eventually gave birth to the Heritage Foundation and project 2025. My father learned it at Bob Jones University and it was in the environment that I swam in every day. 

(My father with Bob Jones Sr., 1961)

None of the platforms of Project 2025 are a surprise to me, because this is what I heard and what I was taught from a very young age.I was wrong, though, in thinking that these ideas were fringe, as I would soon find out.

I eventually became a pastor in that denomination, thinking that I would be able to slowly turn them away from their politics of distrust and separatism towards a more open and accepting love as Jesus taught us.

The congregation were having none of it, and when Covid hit, a large faction tore my congregation apart.

My wife and I moved to Faribault in 2023, looking for a fresh start. 

Before I pastored, I worked in Food Service so I put my management background to work. I worked Human Resources for Hy-vee before moving to Walmart, where I am currently serving as their People Lead (Human Resources Manager).

At my job, I work with many from various cultures – Somali, Hispanic, white, disabled, deaf – and see so many hurting and desperate people.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

But somebody needs to step up. So here I am. Brand-new to politics, but not brand new to compassion, community and courage.

I believe that we don’t have to be divided and distrustful. We can listen to our communities. We can honor cultures and religions as well as common humanity. It is what our country was founded upon.

We can mutually make our communities stronger – first by listening and finding our common ground.

We all need healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us. We all need to be able to have preventative care and mental health care, whether we are trying to scrape pennies together to make ends meet, or whether we have cushion in our bank accounts.

I’ve sat in enough hospital rooms to know that when our loved ones are sick, desperation and fear of the unknown are universal. Illness doesn’t discriminate. But together we should be able to take away the fear of one choosing health care or housing, or health care and food.

And I’ve worked with enough people to know that those are very real choices that our communities have to make daily. Should I buy groceries, or should I get my baby to urgent care? 

This is not the way that healthy communities should operate.

A woman should be free to make the best choice for her health with her doctor, without fear. 

We should not have to fear being tackled in the streets and tased because of the color of our skin.

Together we can keep Minnesota beautiful, strong and welcoming. But we can’t just sit by and wait for someone else to do it.

For this reason, I am seeking your endorsement. I don’t know everything and I am relatively new to Minnesota. But this is my home. We loved it the second we drove in on that snowy day in 2023. The community called to us and we are here. 

It’s our home. Our safe place.

I want to work with you all to bring that safety and belonging and peace to EVERYONE, because, as Maya Angelou said,  …”if we aren’t ALL free, then none of us are free.”

We spend so much time and attention on the movers and shakers, the money people and the builders and the leaders. And yes, every community needs them.

But in the corners are those that are left behind, forgotten, left without a voice.

They are the ones who are too busy trying to eat today and tomorrow; they are the disabled, the outcasts, the strange, the lonely, the poor.

You walk past them and don’t notice. You don’t see the fears. The diagnoses that they can’t afford the treatments for; you don’t see the single mom that loses her job because her childcare canceled at the last minute one too many times.

The desperation and the rejection are painful to see, so people ignore it. And if they are forced to look and see the hopelessness and the dying, they will convince themselves that there must be some moral failing.

If you can blame the sufferer, maybe you can make better choices so that the same thing doesn’t happen to you…

I have a better way.

Let’s look right at it and solve it.

Let’s take on hunger and housing and healthcare. Let’s quit looking away.

Let’s stop pretending that there is some moral failing, or some reason that the fringes deserve to be the fringes.

Let’s quit giving billionaires more dollars, and more corrupt contracts, and actually make some hard choices.

No one should ever avoid healthcare because they can’t afford it.

No one should ever lose their job because of childcare.

No one should ever go hungry because some billionaire isn’t raking in enough.

No one should ever be tackled in the streets or tased because of the color of their skin.

If we lose compassion, we lose community.

And building community takes courage.

Let’s build community together with everyone.

Sam Powell for Senate District 19.

Courage, Compassion, Community.

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