The following statement is reproduced from the campaign website of the candidate, who is responsible for its content.
Abolish the insurance companies!
Nathalie Hrizi, a San Francisco school teacher and community activist is running for California state Insurance Commissioner, the office in charge of setting rates and regulating the huge insurance business. Nathalie’s top priority would be to make sure that everyone has access to health care regardless of their ability to pay.
Quality health care should be a right, not a commodity to make the insurance companies and other healthcare corporations even richer. Instead of health care for all, we are being offered healthcare for some in order to assure the huge profits of the insurance, pharmaceutical, medical equipment and hospital corporations.
The insurance market is a $123 billion business in California alone. Those billions are being left in the control of the owners of insurance companies, which are nothing but parasites that exist solely to profit.
The insurance companies provide zero health services. They’re happy to take our monthly premiums but spend enormous amounts of time and money to avoiding paying for services when we need care.
The California Department of Insurance prides itself on being the largest consumer protection agency in the state. But it’s not doing enough. We need a people’s insurance department that prioritizes the needs, health and well-being of the people of California—not the profits of insurance companies.
As a first step, our campaign calls for a single-payer healthcare system that removes the insurance companies altogether.
A state single payer system would guarantee health care for all people, with the state government paying all medical bills. It would be like Medicare for all. Contrary to right-wing propaganda, Medicare is far more efficient than private insurers.
No one should be denied access to healthcare—or any other form of insurance—because they are immigrants. No truly universal health care would exclude the people who do some of the hardest work for the lowest wages, few benefits and little job security because they were born on the other side of a border.
The Hrizi campaign also demands an immediate moratorium on all insurance rate and premium hikes. All mandated insurance, like car insurance, should be offered to people through the state government at much lower rates.
Our Candidate
Nathalie Hrizi is the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for California Insurance Commissioner and a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Nathalie Hrizi is a public school educator in San Francisco. She has worked as an elementary school teacher in bilingual education for the past 7 years. Before becoming a teacher, she worked as a nanny and home health care worker.
Nathalie has been an activist organizing for people’s needs—health care, jobs, housing and education—not racism and war for over 10 years. She, along with other women active in the antiwar and antiracist movements, worked to start WORD, Women Organized to Resist and Defend, over a year ago to specifically confront the growing attacks on women’s rights and fight for full rights for all women.
As a single mother living in a city increasingly reserved not for working people but for the wealthy, she understands the importance of health care as a right for all people. Her campaign for insurance commissioner calls for the abolition of the insurance companies—from health insurance to auto insurance. All Californians—regardless of immigration status, gender or gender identity or any other factor—should be guaranteed low-cost, comprehensive health care through a single payer system. Other forms of required insurance should be offered at low costs through the state. But ultimately we need a new system—a system where our health and wellbeing is not a commodity sold at a profit while we suffer but a central priority of the society. That system is socialism.
Get involved in the Hrizi for Insurance Commissioner campaign! Vote Hrizi in 2014!
Please visit Hrizi2014.org
