Oscar Chacon, Executive Director, Alianza Americas ; Dr. Donald E. Moore, MD, MPH Board Member, Physicians for a National Health Program, N.Y. Metro Chapter
As Jan. 31st Deadline for Open Enrollment Under ObamaCare Looms, Doctor Finds Better Prescription Medicare for All with Dr. Donald E. Moore, MD, MPH; President, Medical Society of the County of Kings; Board Member, Physicians for a National Health Program, N.Y. Metro Chapter
While millions of Americans now scrambling to re-enroll in health insurance programs under the Affordable Care Act are frustrated by the limitations of the private insurance marketplace, Dr. Moore, while noting the gains made under OmamaCare sees it's defects play out in his efforts to provide good medical care to patients. In addition to often increasing out of pocket expenses,the insurance companies dictate which specialists he can refer patients to and he is pressured to shorten patient visits and bill them more. In response he has in effect gone single payer, or advocates Medicare for all, refusing to work with private insurers and now mainly accepting patients under Medicare and Medicaid. He is urging all doctors to join the movement for Medicare for All (Single Payer) to reform the health care system based on inefficent private health care insurance with its high administrative overhead and profit margins. He has joined with other doctors in the Physicians for a National Health Program in lobbying the NYS Legislature to institute a Single Payer System in NYS, or Medicare for all, and the NYS Assembly recently overwhelming passed such a bill. ***** The Presidential Candidates On Immigration: Exploiting the Politics of Resentment with Oscar Chacon, Executive Director, Alianza Americas
When New York billionaire and GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump launched into his anti-immigrant tirade against Mexicans crossing the border, he was using a long known political technique of plugging into the live wire of American resentment of the other " most recently Latinos; more precisely, those from the Southern borders: Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and the like. And, no doubt the recent tragedies in France will be exploited to promote a new wave of fear and antagonism towards immigrants and migrants of Arab descent.
But, since the 19th century, politicians have used currents of fear, often fueled by economic downturns for the working class to crank up movements against those who came from abroad. Oscar Chacon discusses how US immigration policy is rooted in a narrative that paints immigrants as a criminal threat to order and progress and that the political dilemma extends across party lines and is threaded through the positions of all the Presidential candidates to some degree. Given that underlying assumption Chacon discusses how US immigration policy can truly be fixed, which he contends depends on how quickly and effectively organized immigrant communities "and those who wish to make common cause with them "can build the political muscle necessary to ensure that their needs and demands can be neither co-opted nor ignored.
produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
please notify us if you plan to broadcast this program - knash@igc.org