Op-Ed: Health Care is on the Ballot, Lives are on the Line

Op-Ed: Health Care is on the Ballot, Lives are on the Line

Jasmin Sosa, Florida Poderosa Fellow, Poder Latinx

There has and always will be a line between health and voting - a fragile line. Elected officials have the power to create and pass legislation that directly affects how we can get health care provided and at what cost. Health care is a necessity.  Everyone deserves the fundamental right to access affordable, quality health care. Politicians will preach to their constituents that healthcare needs to remain privatized in order to keep profiteering off deals with Big Pharma. Those gatekeeping universal access while prioritizing privatization are putting profits over people. People that are sick or may be sick, those needing treatment or needing annual checkups will find themselves with even more hurdles to finding affordable care.

I am a sophomore in college and COVID-19 struck my family in ways we are still trying to recover from. My parents are from Colombia and Guatemala, and I have been raised in Florida. My dad was a diabetes patient, but we lost him to COVID almost two years ago. In order to receive the necessary treatment for his illnesses, a prolonged hospital stay was necessary. My mother worked as a stocker, but because she took so much time off from work to take care of my dad, she lost her job, so we went almost a year and a half without health insurance. I went without dental, physical, and vision checkups throughout this time. 

When we first arrived in Florida, my family and I were provided health insurance under Obamacare which gave us short-term benefits. As tax season rolled around, we found out we weren’t eligible for this program and ended up being financially hurt. This set us on an arduous journey to securing a new health insurance provider, struggling because my mother took on bills by herself and didn’t understand the complex health insurance system. More so, my mother is not a fluent English speaker and largely depended on my assistance. As a teenager, my Google searches comprised of “What is health insurance?” and “How to know if health insurance is an online scam.”  We lacked the resources for assistance and didn’t have any family members that had already gone through this process. It felt like my mom and I were all alone, as she had to search for employment that specifically provided health insurance. 

As a person needing prescription eyeglasses, my vision has constantly been changing. Without getting a vision check-up - my vision was worsening but I had been wearing outdated prescriptions for over a year. This ended up causing irreparable damage, as my optometrist informed me that the glasses were actually worsening my vision.

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the United States is on a path to securing more equitable healthcare that people can afford. With the upcoming midterm elections, we all have a duty to vote for candidates who will continue expanding upon health care policies. Poder Latinx calls on you to join us in supporting healthcare champions this November and to continue contacting your members of Congress to know that the American people need more accessible healthcare resources.