E-mail a friendDeepak Bhargava
airdate December 16, 2005
Deepak Bhargava is executive director of the Center for Community Change, a 35-year-old nonprofit advocacy group and think tank. He's worked on numerous public policy issues, including housing and health. He previously worked in various capacities at ACORN and directed the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support. Bhargava was born in India, grew up in NYC and received his BA from Harvard. He serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Center on Law and Social Policy.
Deepak Bhargava
Tavis: We continue our "Road to Health" series tonight with a look at how our communities can improve their collective health care. Deepak Bhargava is Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, a nonprofit group seeking social change for low-income neighborhoods. He joins us tonight from Washington. Deepak Bhargava, nice to have you on the program.
Deepak Bhargava: Thanks so much, Tavis. Really appreciate it.
Tavis: My pleasure. Let me start by asking whether or not it is possible for communities to collectively improve their health care, number one. And number two, if that's possible, why does that fall the lot to poor communities? Nobody in Beverly Hills has to collectively improve the health of their community.
Bhargava: Well, I think you're asking exactly the right question. The political and social context for health care has been dramatically changing over the last few years. We've got forty-five million Americans now without health insurance. That's four million more than we had when President Bush first took office. We've got corporations radically changing the equation of the workplace so that working people are losing access to health care or paying more for it.
We know that plenty of people who have health insurance are very dissatisfied with the level of care that they're getting and feel really squeezed. So we have a dramatic, serious, profound problem and all the efforts that are happening around obesity and HIV-AIDS and the tremendous community efforts through education, they won't succeed unless we have a radically different government posture with regard to health care, and that's where the community role really comes in.
Tavis: All right. So can communities collectively impact, improve, their health situation?
Bhargava: Yes. We know that they can. We know that, when communities organize, they can make a tremendous difference in the availability and access to good quality health care. So in communities around the country from San Jose, California to Washington, D.C., we've seen citizens get organized in their communities, in their neighborhoods, at every level, to demand better health care policies from cities, expansion of programs like Medicaid to cover the uninsured, ensuring that local hospitals are providing good quality care to neighborhood residents. We've seen a real explosion in health care organizing around the country by people who are really experiencing these problems directly in their lives.
Tavis: At the risk of sounding stuck on stupid by even asking this question, Deepak, let me ask it anyway. Why does it fall the lot, back to my earlier question, why the responsibility, why the need for these various and particular communities to be responsible for collectively improving their health when, in other parts of the country and other communities, it's an individual concern? You ain't got to be part of no collective to bring everybody's health care up.
Bhargava: Well, unfortunately, the sad reality is that this all comes down to a question of power. Who's got it and who exercises it? So in an ideal world, we would have a rational national health care system to provide a good quality health care to every American regardless of their income or regardless of their race. But we know, in order to get to that place, we're going to have to see citizens mobilize just like they've mobilized for voting rights and education and basic Democratic rights. It's going to take that kind of organizing, that kind of mobilizing, to get politicians' attention, to make people pay attention to the very real health crisis we have in our communities today.
Tavis: Talk to me about the intersection and whether or not it exists, and I assume that it does, but the intersection between the good health care or the lack thereof and public policy. Talk to me about that intersection.
Bhargava: Well, we've seen in this country, big strides forward in health care coverage over the course of the 90's. We saw expansions in the Medicaid program and coverage for children in particular. But since really the year 2000, we've seen a dramatic shift in public health programs that provide coverage, especially Medicaid, to low-income families. In Missouri, they just recently cut off a hundred thousand poor people, most of them kids, from the Medicaid program. In Tennessee, two hundred thousand people are going to lose their coverage come January.
So there's a direct relationship between our federal policies on health care, how many people are covered by Medicaid and the children's health program, and the results we see in terms of health impacts in our neighborhoods, in our communities. The federal government right now is walking away from its responsibility and major cuts are on the table for these programs. So we're seeing even the limited progress we've made over the last few years really be rolled back in an extreme way.
Tavis: Let me turn the corner right quick then, Deepak. What can the aggregate, what can the collective do then to improve the health of these persons who are socially, politically, culturally, economically disenfranchised?
Bhargava: Well, individually, we can't do very much. Together and collectively, we can organize the demand that policy makers at every level of government take responsibility for what should be a right and a public good, good decent health care. So that means members of Congress saying don't cut these public programs like Medicaid. Expand them and ensure that every kid, parent and adult in this country has coverage. At the local level, expanding public health programs, expanding coverage for vulnerable populations, and making sure institutions are responsible too so that corporations and hospitals do their share.
Tavis: Let me ask you whether or not it is your personal belief, your political belief, that these vulnerable communities, these communities made up of the least among us, whether or not they could in fact change their outlook on health matters and other concerns if they voted more or if they voted more in a block. I raise that issue because I was reading an article the other day, Deepak, that talked about how oftentimes the people who vote least often happen to be the least among us, so they're impacted by in many ways their not voting. The same is true of young people. So if they involve themselves more in the process and voted as a block or as a collective, do you think that in fact would improve their lot in life?
Bhargava: That's a crucial piece of the puzzle. One-third of poor people in this country vote in big elections. That's compared to two-thirds of wealthy. Votes are the currency of the day in determining who gets resources from Congress, from state legislatures, from governors. So the key to turning around the health care situation for low-income people, for disadvantaged people, has got to be exercising collective power at the ballot box. That's really the foundation for any strategy for change.
Tavis: As you go about this work every day, which really is work, again, on behalf of those who are the least among us, what in these critical times keeps you hopeful about the work that you do?
Bhargava: Well, it's really seeing ordinary citizens take their future into their own hands. That's everything from registering their neighbors to vote, to trying to make sure that local hospitals provide, as according to the law, free care to indigent and poor communities, to seeing ordinary people who've got one and two and three jobs take the time to go up to state capitals to lobby their legislatures to insist that children be covered, that parents be covered, that we have good quality health care, seeing people who are living on the edge taking responsibility and taking their lives and their future in their hands. That's what inspires me to do this work.
Tavis: He is the Executive Director of the Center for Community Change in Washington. He's Deepak Bhargava. Deepak, nice to have you on the program. All the best to you in the coming months and years in the work that you do. We appreciate having you on the program.
Bhargava: Thanks for your leadership, Tavis. Thanks a lot.
Tavis: Nice to have you on. That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll see you back here next time, though, on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.
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