Echoing Ida Dispels Myths and Gets Real About Health Care Reform
October 2, 2013Despite the shut down of the federal government, the Affordable Care Act, commonly and now affectionately known as ObamaCare, continues to roll out. Yesterday, millions of uninsured and curious individuals began flooding www.healthcare.gov to find out whether they really could get health coverage, many for the first time in their lives. Like clockwork, those who would deny millions access to the care they need are attempting to do so by also denying pay to millions of federal workers and those who need access to programs like WIC and Head Start. For those of us involved in Echoing Ida—the Strong Families project that highlights Black women’s voices—these attempts to deny our basic human rights to health care, food, and education are nothing new. But with the onset of ObamaCare, for the first time, our communities have, as Echoing Ida writer Jasmine Burnett puts it, “a unique opportunity to bury the medical wrongs of the past that have had a negative impact on Black Americans.”