Washington, D.C., March 15- Unity Health Clinic staff and physicians led the chant “Unite for our Patients” at a city hall rally in downtown Washington, D.C.. These health care workers demanded more staff and realistic scheduling of patients. Nearly 40 percent of their workers have quit in recent years due to despicable, untenable working conditions. A year ago they joined the Union of American Physicians and Dentists and walked out to demand a change to the unrealistic scheduling of patients which continues to this day. Unity Health was founded to serve unhoused and previously incarcerated workers and provide them with services beyond just health care. The understaffing is a racist attack on the mainly Black and Latin workers who depend on the clinics for their healthcare. A physician who had struck against similar abysmal working conditions years earlier joined the rally, sharing CHALLENGE and Progressive Labor Party's communist analysis.
Racist understaffing makes workers sicker
Physician Assistants (PAs) and doctors told us that their patients are primarily Spanish speaking and, while many providers are bilingual, some are not. Poverty, immigration fears, and complex medical problems as well as the language barrier drive the challenges facing these patients. Doctors are scheduled for 24 patients a day and physician assistants for 20 patients per day making it impossible to properly deal with these health issues. “It is exhausting for me to speak Spanish all day and manage medical and social issues,” said one of the new PAs. Another doctor who is not bilingual said, “I do use phone translation but it is time consuming, sometimes wrong, and I know I can’t do right by my patients.”
Besides being understaffed and over scheduled, continuity of care is also lacking which means patients cannot see the same PA or doctor every visit without waiting months for an appointment.
We talked about capitalist health care, the union-busting lawyers the city would rather pay instead of health care workers, and the need for a totally new system that serves workers' interests, not profits. Sharing CHALLENGE with several providers deepened the discussion about the need for revolutionary change in this critical moment. Highlighting the sharpening struggle all around us, another health worker who had just been forced to return from Malawi when President Donald Trump abolished the United States Agency For International Development (USAID) discovered that she had been fired the next day! Unity Health is a federally funded clinic, many of which are facing challenges from Trump's funding freeze and cuts to Medicaid and Medicare.
In addition, the city budget for D.C. is being held hostage by Congress with $1 billion in spending cuts to city services including community clinics (Washington Post, 04/07). These are blatant racist and sexist attacks on workers who need these programs to stay alive. Nothing short of the complete and utter destruction of the heinous capitalist system will do. Capitalism drives fascist cutbacks in programs serving working people across the globe. Communism will, through collectivity and empathy, meet the needs of the world’s workers!
