As a child, I remember holding a deep, looming sense of dread about a coming apocalypse. I remember trembling in fear during thunderstorms, as I’d hear the sky roar and watch dark clouds gather believing that the time had come when everything would come to an end. I’ve since grown out of those fears, and moved onto other, more down to earth, but perhaps equally irrational things to dread. Yet in these times of global crises, I can’t help but think back to how I felt as a child, when I thought I was growing up in a world with no future. However, now is not the time to withdraw from hope. As the world around us increasingly feels like something apocalyptic, it’s important to realize that this is not the end. Instead, it is a time of revelation and a time for us to take note of what is being revealed in this moment and how it should inform us in crafting a new beginning. It is clear to me that this crisis has revealed several things. First, in terms of our need for solidarity, this crisis has revealed that we are much more connected than we tend to think and we need one another more than we’ve previously thought. Also, despite the obvious strains on resources a crisis can bring about, this crisis reveals that our society has long had plenty of the material resources to meet people’s basic needs. In addition to the investments in healthcare, infrastructure, testing, and treatment to address the current COVID-19 pandemic, we must also prepare for future epidemics and work to prevent the coming catastrophes due to climate change. In order to do our part to work towards this world, Progressive Maryland and People's Action are shifting our organizing plans to meet this moment. My prayers are with all who are suffering in this challenging time. However, in the midst of all of this, we must recognize that we live on the shoulders of ancestors who have survived through crisis and devastation. We now take our place in history and must step up in ways that will enable history to judge this moment as not only a tragic event, but as a catalyst for a global awakening.
Keeping our wits about us is no easy lift, certainly not now as we all shelter in place and anticipate the impact COVID-19 will have on our lives. And yet, doing so will allow us to organize and live from a place of power and grace. Crises like the one we face today create incredible danger. At the same time, they lay bare our failing systems, and open up the potential for change that is long overdue. To mitigate the tremendous dangers and seize the opportunities we need to invest in keeping it together. Our best won’t come from simply working harder. I think most of us have tried this already! But it might come from building up a centeredness from which we approach all that we are doing. Most of us have had practices at different points in our lives – that could be a meditation, prayer, reading, pausing, ritual, or simply a routine that works for us. While I am tempted to view this time as a luxury, I’ve learned that sitting with your thoughts takes courage. Busyness is often a way of avoiding what’s really going on – and can masquerade as selflessness.
Health care workers continue to put their lives on the line, caring for patients despite critical shortages of the safety gear they need to protect themselves from COVID-19. To help, factories now churn out face shields, masks and gowns. And millions of workers stay home to slow the spread of the disease. Americans from all walks of life have stepped up to battle COVID-19. With one glaring exception: Donald Trump. Trump’s arrogance and failures compound a crisis that’s already damaged the economy and put thousands of Americans in early graves. He’s a tweeter, not a leader. Trump denied that the coronavirus was a risk until it overran the country, ignoring the warnings of intelligence agencies and public officials who tracked the threat from overseas. Heeding those warnings would have given the nation time to get COVID-19 tests and safety gear to hospitals and doctors’ offices. But Trump claimed he knew better than the experts. As late as Feb. 28, he called concerns about the virus a “hoax” during a political rally in South Carolina. News of the first American death from COVID-19 came just hours later. Trump’s swagger masquerading as leadership is the real hoax.
The jaw-dropping conclusion of a federal court hearing on April 1 about Wisconsin’s statewide elections on April 7 was no April Fools’ joke. U.S. District Judge William Conley said the state’s Democratic governor and Republican-led legislature had failed to put their citizenry’s health first by not postponing the statewide election in a pandemic. It is not very often that a federal judge slams a state’s executive and legislative branches from the bench before issuing a ruling. But below the headline-grabbing pronouncement are equally serious concerns that will resurface in federal and state courts between now and the 2020 general election. Those concerns are how far can a court go—federal or state—to change the means and rules of voting. Wisconsin was the only state of 11 slated to hold statewide elections in April that did not change its plans. That decision, in part due to Republican legislators wanting to boost the GOP’s odds of winning a state Supreme Court race, sparked three lawsuits. One sought to postpone the election. A second sought to ensure that all absentee ballots that were postmarked by April 7, but arrived in the mail days later, would be counted. The third sought to suspend a state law requiring all absentee voters to have a witness sign their ballot.
Doctor Ming Lin is the first emergency room doctor to be fired for going public with his concerns about poor hospital emergency room safety practices and shortages of medical supplies and protective gear for health workers. He won’t be the last. Like many hospitals in the U.S., PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham Washington, where Ming Lin worked for the past 17 years as an emergency room doctor, has outsourced the management and staffing of its emergency room. So, Min works on-site at the hospital’s ER, but he is employed by a physician staffing firm that runs the ER. These staffing firms are often behind the surprise medical bills for ER services that patients receive after their insurance company has paid the hospital and doctors, but not the excessive out-of-network charges billed by these outside staffing firms. About a third of hospital emergency rooms are staffed by doctors on the payrolls of two physician staffing companies—TeamHealth and Envision Health—owned by Wall Street investment firms. Envision Healthcare employs 69,000 healthcare workers nationwide while TeamHealth employs 20,000. Private equity firm Blackstone Group owns TeamHealth, Kravis Kohlberg Roberts (KKR) owns Envision. Care of the sick is not the mission of these companies; their mission is to make outsized profits for the private equity firms and its investors. Overcharging patients and insurance companies for providing urgent and desperately needed emergency medical care is bad enough. But it is unconscionable to muzzle doctors who speak out to advocate for the health of their patients and co-workers during the global pandemic that is rapidly spreading across the U.S.
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