{"id":17935,"date":"2025-12-04T18:08:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T18:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=17935"},"modified":"2025-12-04T18:08:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T18:08:37","slug":"an-open-letter-to-the-lucas-county-board-of-commissioners-strike-while-the-iron-is-hot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/04\/an-open-letter-to-the-lucas-county-board-of-commissioners-strike-while-the-iron-is-hot\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to the Lucas County Board of Commissioners: Strike While the Iron Is Hot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Donald Perryman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/em>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We now find that it is not only right to strike while the iron is hot, but that it is very practicable to heat it by continual Striking. <\/em>\u2013 Benjamin Franklin<\/p>\n

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Affordability is now the issue that drives American politics, with 63 percent of Americans\u2014including 47 percent of Republicans\u2014supporting Medicare for All, even if it ends private insurance and raises taxes.<\/p>\n

Translated, it means that the health care crisis is reaching a breaking point that elected officials and decision-makers can no longer ignore.<\/p>\n

Support for such measures has risen 26 to 50 points since 2018, signaling that the ground is indeed shifting beneath us and that Americans are no longer willing to tolerate the status quo, as David Sirota recently argued in A Massive Shift in Health Care Politics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If the tide is turning toward Medicare for All models and other health equity proposals, then Lucas County leaders cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

Lucas County is the poster child for the affordability struggle that so many face in healthcare, housing and basic necessities.<\/p>\n

If Lucas County can rally around economic development issues that benefit business leaders and downtown, yet leave out minorities \u2014 or convene area leaders and national experts at a summit to decry the lack of a coordinated anti-poverty plan, as they did in early October \u2014 why have we never brought the same urgency and seriousness to confront healthcare injustice?<\/p>\n

Our own Healthy Lucas County data shows chronic disease rising fastest where coverage is thinnest. Black mothers face maternal mortality and prenatal barriers at unacceptable levels. Life expectancy levels between people of color and others are obscenely lopsided. The rates for hypertension, dialysis and amputations that could have been prevented are disgusting, as families delay care until a crisis because co-pays are unaffordable, transportation is limited, and preventive care feels like a luxury instead of a right.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to teach Black and Brown families what medical inequity feels like \u2014 the billing statements prove that the most dangerous health decisions are often not medical \u2014 they are financial.<\/p>\n

So here is what must happen next \u2014 clearly, urgently and without delay:<\/p>\n

Lucas County should convene the region\u2019s first Health Equity & Medicare-for-All Readiness Summit\u00a0within the next 12 months \u2014 modeled with the same seriousness, structure and collaborative energy we saw in the economic summit. The table must seat the same stakeholders \u2014 county commissioners, healthcare systems, policy experts, insurers, union heads, lawmakers, grassroots advocates \u2014 but with health<\/em> as the agenda, equity as the priority and public readiness for Medicare for All as the mandate.<\/p>\n

Such a summit must be more than a blame session or finger-pointing debate. It must produce at a minimum:<\/p>\n