Anita Cameron, Not Dead Yet Director of Minority Outreach, testified at ADAPT’s “People’s Hearing” on October 2, 2020, to press for full federal funding for home and community based long term services and supports. Anita makes a passionate appeal for the preservation of the Affordable Care Act, which has provisions for people like her with pre-existing conditions. She calls out nursing homes as Covid-19 death traps, and how Black quadriplegic Michael Hickson was killed in a Texas hospital because of a quality-of-life judgment. Anita says that Covid -19 has ravaged the Black, indigenous, and people of color communities. She mentions AOC [Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez] and calls on people of color communities to contact their legislators and to keep fighting on behalf of people like herself whose health issues prevent them from being out there. She ends with ADAPT’s longtime call to arms, “Free our People!”
Below is a video of her moving testimony, followed by a transcript.
Hi, everyone. I didn’t hear my introduction. People were worried because my phone died in the middle of all of this. I’m really happy that we are having these people’s hearings, because look, I wanna say, we cannot afford to lose the Affordable Care Act.
I have been going through all kinds of hospitalizations, doctor’s visits. Even today, I spent pretty much the entire afternoon at the doctors, for severe health issues that I’m going through. I have all kinds of preexisting conditions. If it were not for the Affordable Care Act, I wouldn’t have my insurance. I wouldn’t be able to see the doctors that I’m seeing now and we need this. And we need. Look, it’s bad enough. If we get rid of the Affordable Care Act, yeah, I’m gonna talk about stuff that people don’t wanna hear or whatnot.
But first, briefly, I’m Anita. I’m from Rochester, ROC ADAPT, and in my day job, I am Director of Minority Outreach for Not Dead Yet. We know what COVID has done to communities of color. It’s ravaged the black community. It has ravaged the indigenous community. It has ravaged communities of color, and racial disparities in healthcare also mean that, if you are someone of color and you don’t have the resources or anything, you’re going to wind up in a nursing home – that’s all there is to it.
How can these people, these politicians, how can they sleep at night? I don’t know. So many millions and millions and millions of people in this country will literally die if the Affordable Care Act was done away with. The Affordable Care Act, we know as ADAPT members, but a lot of people don’t realize that in the Affordable Care Act, there are the provisions for long-term services and supports that keep us people with disabilities in our own homes and not in some nursing institution, death camp. And because of COVID we know these nursing facilities are COVID traps!
So many people in these places are coming up with COVID and dying. That’s what happened to Michael Hickson. Michael Hickson was sent – he’s from Texas – he was sent to a nursing home where he caught COVID. And then the doctors refused to treat him because they said, he had no quality of life because of his disabilities. So, whoever, you listen, members of Congress, members of the Senate, fight for this. Fight for us.
I’m so happy that Congresswoman, that AOC went and stopped and spoke to the ADAPT folks out there in the rain doing that work. Thank you. Thank y’all. For out there doing that work, I can’t be out there with y’all now with my health and all that. Keep on, keep on fighting, keep on out here doing this work for those of us that can’t. Yeah.
Free our people!
Thank you.