CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the media advise sick folks who have or think they have COVID 19 (coronavirus) to stay home, but without paid sick leave, Uber drivers, restaurant workers, nursing home workers, etc, take over the counter medicine and go to work, infecting others. Their logic is simple. Starvation and homelessness are scarier than coronavirus. Plus, most of the millions of low wage American workers who don’t get paid sick leave are also uninsured. They don’t get any benefits.
That’s why even conservative Republican congressmen like Rep. Ted Yoho (Florida) are now advocating for free testing and treatment of the uninsured. “You can look at it as socialized medicine, but in the face of an outbreak, a pandemic, what’s your options?” United States hospitals are charging patients thousands of dollars for coronavirus testing. If people can’t pay, they are sent to collection. Healthcare is a human right, not something reserved for people fortunate enough to have good jobs with healthcare benefits, the wealthy and senior citizens. We should not wait for an airborne virus pandemic to provide healthcare to all.
Airborne viruses are like smoke, they can’t read. Older readers will remember when restaurants had “no smoking” sections. That did nothing to stop smoke from the “smoking” section drifting and polluting all the air in the restaurant. Similarly, airborne coronavirus does not limit itself to the poor sections of our planet. It is spreading.
Therefore, in addition to free testing and treatment of the uninsured, we need free food and free housing subsidies so that working people without paid sick leave don’t have to choose between going to work and infecting others or paying their bills. Where do we get the money? Repeal the tax cut for the rich 1%. This is not just some philosophical blog. I know good, decent people who work 2 jobs without benefits; changing bedridden patient’s diapers, driving strangers in their cars who could rape them or get them fired with one false comment to Uber; just so they can feed and house themselves and their families. They and the millions of others similarly situated, are the reason I wrote and sang “Voice of the Voiceless.”
One Love…
Aria