What health care means to young voters<\/p>\n
Bianca Little teaches a course called \u201cpeace and social change\u201d for high school seniors. As a teacher, she said it is important that her pupils receive well-rounded civics education in order to \u201chelp them become critical thinkers, especially in [the] climate that we have right now, politically and socially, where there\u2019s so much misinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that a civics education is undeniably tied to health care as it involves \u201cunderstanding how to take care of yourself. If you\u2019re gonna take care of your community, you have to have that foundation within yourself first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of her students have a strong understanding of the connection between health care and civics as they have experiences with family members who are sick or living with a disability and have encountered difficulties with accessibility services.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these things are connected because I think civics teaches you when you see something wrong, how do you start to fix it? I think we live in a society that isn\u2019t fully aware and cognizant of people who are disabled or people who aren\u2019t able bodied. So the two are married,\u201d Little said.<\/p>\n
Sarah Weill-Jones, a disability justice advocate from Philadelphia, is currently on their mother\u2019s insurance but is becoming increasingly worried about what they will do once they turn 26.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows what job I\u2019ll have? Who knows what schooling I\u2019ll be in during that time, and if I\u2019ll have a job that gives me the benefits that I\u2019ll need to access the same level of health care that I\u2019m receiving now?\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
For them, health care is a priority when deciding how to vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf your representative is not actively advocating for you to receive quality health care and providers that are invested in your well-being, then it\u2019s not someone that you should be voting for,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
Weill-Jones said that Vot-ER\u2019s initiative to increase voter and civic education by integrating it with health care is \u201cabsolutely a no brainer.\u201d However, they also believe that these civic projects should expand beyond doctors offices as many voters may not have the coverage required to see a provider.<\/p>\n
In terms of public policy, Rumbos-Perez said that \u201cMedicare for All\u201d has been a \u201crallying cry for a lot of young people\u201d. The proposed bill would establish a universal single-payer national health insurance system.<\/p>\n
Many young people become deeply aware of the link between health care and civics \u201cthe second that you yourself are dealing with the bureaucracy of either private medical insurance or public health care,\u201d Rumbos-Perez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hold on to the hope that in my lifetime we will pass something like \u2018Medicare for All\u2019 in the U.S., but that takes people to be civically engaged and to use whatever political voice they have to make that happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: This story is part of a series on Youth Civic Engagement funded by the William Penn Foundation. WHYY News produces independent, fact-based news content for audiences in Greater Philadelphia, Delaware and South Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What health care means to young voters Bianca Little teaches a course called \u201cpeace and social change\u201d for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[40360,25694,3831,69,71,70,61434],"class_list":["post-289585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-civic-engagement","tag-elections-2026","tag-health-care","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-youth-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}