This is one of the Policy Planks of the United Frontline Table’s toolkit A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy. The policy planks are one of three tools in the kit, together with series of Strategy Questions and the Protect, Repair, Invest, and Transform Framework. Make sure the check out the section on How to Use This Resource to Enhance Your Work and the Working Definitions.
HEALTHCARE FOR ALL
Healthcare is a human right. It should be reliable, safe, and nurturing. When the pandemic hit, millions lost healthcare because they lost their job. A pandemic shut down an economy and our healthcare. It also showed the deep racial disparities in health coverage, treatment, and prioritization. No one should be turned away because they cannot afford care. No one should be treated differently by doctors because of their race. Our healthcare system continues to marginalize poor and working class communities and fails to address the deep racial disparities in access and care. A Regenerative Economy requires that society create a different system that is healthy, holistic, nurturing, and job-creating.
POLICY STANCES AND PRIORITIES
Protect
No More Inequitable and Racialized Burdens
Create an immediate regional-based healthcare system that addresses inequity and disparity, and removes the economic burdens and occupational and environmental health impacts on Asian and Pacific Islander, Black, Brown, Indigeneous, poor, and marginalized people, which include at-risk workers in extractive industries.
Protect
Right to Clean Air, Water, and Communities
All communities—especially environmental justice communities who have borne the adverse health impacts and other unjust costs of our extractive economy for decades—have a right to clean air, water, and communities free of known and unknown toxic environmental contaminants. Access to clean, healthy, affordable, and community-held water systems, and measures to ensure healthy soils and clean air and breathable communities, must be part of the infrastructure that ensures
and protects everyone’s right to clean air, water, and communities.
Invest
Equitable Healthcare Infrastructure
Aggressively build and resource an accessible, equitable healthcare infrastructure aimed at ensuring robust, quality, and resilient healthcare to all people in the country, especially those who are neglected by the current medical system and who endure unstable health conditions caused by environmental and climate injustice.
Transform
Right to Just, Equitable, and Accessible Healthcare
Design and publicly fund a universal healthcare system that guarantees equitable and just access to holistic health- care for all people. A universal healthcare system must be designed to address and eradicate racist healthcare practices of our current system. The public health system should prioritize those underserved by for-profit insurance companies and those with occupational and environmental health impacts from chronic and acute exposure to multi-contaminants and hazardous working and living conditions due to work in and proximity to extractive, pollutive industries.
Repair
Improve and Expand Healthcare Systems for All Indigenous Communities
Recognize the U.S. government’s commitment and responsibility to provide healthcare to Indigenous Peoples. Recognize the limitations of Indian Health Services as the primary healthcare provider by making significant investments to expand and improve the availability of healthcare services to Indigenous Peoples within Tribal Nations, as well as through urban Indian hospitals, clinics, and health programs. The dire needs include immediate access to safe water and sanitation systems; funding for Tribal Epidemiology Centers, specialists, and health research facilities; and expansion of telehealth capacity within Indian Territories, which requires investment in bridging the digital divide via increased broadband access and technological skill-building.