At night in late March 2020, I arrived for yet another "Team 700" call for an intubated COVID-19 patient in cardiac arrest without enough staff or any family by her side.
Low oxygen alarms blared across the PA system. A resident physician leaned against a wall and sobbed, showing the despair and helplessness that I felt too.
After we stopped our futile resuscitation, the person's body would disappear into a refrigerated shipping container since the morgue was already full.
Covered in airway secretions with sweat soaking through my scrubs, I doffed my PPE and thought: at least after all this is over, everyone will finally understand why we need a universal health system.
Six years later, it's 2026. In the June primaries, New Yorkers sent a resounding message: we don't accept rigged political machines that sell us out to corporate donors.
The sweep by democratic socialists reaffirmed the lesson we learned from Zohran's campaign: organized people can beat organized money. "Progressive" Democrats and their liberal-sounding allies have caved to the extractive health industry for long enough.
Working class New Yorkers will join the democratic socialists for a bold demand: bring bosses down a notch and win the New York Health Act in 2027, finally taking healthcare off the bargaining table.
I heard echoes of the 7pm clapping for health workers in June's DSA primary victories. We care about our neighbors; we can and will build a better world. It's time to put healthcare back on the affordability agenda where it belongs.
Damien Archbold is one of the two co-chairs for the NYC-DSA Healthcare Working Group and is a physician at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.
All opinions are of Damien's own. Beyond Diagnosis is focused on amplifying voices across the left on all topics of healthcare. Please reach out to the Working Group if there is a topic in healthcare you'd like to write about.