The Crossing Podcast
Holly Mitchell on the Quest to Bring Health Care to All Californians
The L.A. County Supervisor shares her own experience inside the state’s fractured medical system and the huge stakes in creating a better one.
For most of her adult life, Holly Mitchell has worked to advance policy-based solutions for California’s staggering disparities in health care access and coverage.
But as the pandemic ripped back the curtains on decades of festering health care issues, it has become clearer just how large that challenge is. Is a statewide legislative solution to a health system built on profit even feasible?
“If California can’t get it done, I can’t imagine that any other state would,” says Mitchell, a former advocate and state senator who now serves on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “What I’ve struggled with is, show me the algorithm of how to pay for it. … We have a responsibility as policymakers to pencil that out in a meaningful way.”
With another single-payer bill soon to be introduced in the State Assembly, Mitchell and others will revisit one of California’s longest-running conversations: how to ensure health care for all of its residents. For Mitchell, a Black woman who was born and raised in Los Angeles, her personal understanding of the scope of that problem gives her a deep appreciation of the challenge — and of why it has to be taken on.
In this episode of The Crossing, Mitchell shares her lived experience inside California’s fractured medical system and her ideas for bringing greater health care access to more people in the state.
Copyright 2021 Capital & Main
-
Dirty Money: U.S. Banks and the Climate CrisisMarch 11, 2024
Many of the U.S. Banks Funding Coal Have an Unusual Carve-Out
-
Latest NewsMarch 22, 2024
In Georgia, a Basic Income Program’s Success With Black Women Adds to Growing National Interest
-
The SlickFebruary 28, 2024
Proposed Drilling Near Suburban Denver Superfund Site Raising Flags
-
Class WarMarch 12, 2024
Power of the Pulpit: How Conservative Congregations Scale the Church-State Wall to Political Victory
-
Striking BackMarch 25, 2024
Unionizing Planned Parenthood
-
State of InequalityFebruary 29, 2024
Labor Scores a Victory at Cal State Campuses
-
Latest NewsMarch 13, 2024
A Disease Took Her Mobility. Now, at 70, She Could Lose Her Home.
-
Class WarMarch 26, 2024
‘They Don’t Want to Teach Black History’