Imagine that your home was on fire but firefighters refused to extinguish the blaze because you didn’t have the right insurance, or your premiums weren’t paid in full, or you didn’t jump through the myriad requisite flaming hoops to qualify for relief.
That’s the premise of a video published Wednesday promoting the New York Health Act, a bill that, if passed, would provide single-payer, universal health coverage for all Empire State residents and workers.
The video, which stars faux-firefighters Jabari Brisport and Zohran Kwame Mamdani—two Democratic New York state lawmakers who back the bill—is meant to draw attention to what single-payer supporters say is the absurdity of the United States being the only nation in the developed world without universal healthcare.
Backers of the bill argue that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic underscores the necessity of immediately passing universal healthcare legislation, with single-payer advocates noting that 300,000 New Yorkers lost their health coverage during the proverbial inferno of the Covid-19 crisis.
Proponents say the state bill would fix that. According to the Campaign for New York Health:
The campaign notes that “every day, as many as three New Yorkers die needlessly due to lack of health coverage. It’s so common that it no longer makes the headlines. In the last 10 years, an estimated 20,000 New Yorkers died unnecessarily due to lack of health insurance. Over one million New Yorkers lack health insurance, and millions more have plans that would bankrupt them when faced with a medical emergency.”
“The U.S. nationally spends more than $3 trillion on healthcare every year, our healthcare outcomes are far behind other high-income countries in nearly every category,” the campaign says. “For example, maternal mortality is actually increasing in the U.S. despite every other comparable country making significant gains in reducing deaths related to pregnancy.”
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