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By Bob Hennelly

Today is a national holiday, and on this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber & Bob Hennelly, we’re talking about the hundreds of thousands of EMTs and paramedics working hard to save lives and deliver health care to tens of millions of Americans who do not have regular access to a doctor.  

EMTs and paramedics do this life saving and stressful work for low wages in a predatory for profit healthcare system that yields billions of dollars in profits while poverty has become the fourth leading cause of death in America. Poverty is ahead of homicides—causing 800 avoidable and preventable deaths a day.

In nearly three dozen states, EMS isn’t even considered an essential service like Police and Fire. The current system is a dysfunctional patchwork of volunteer, for-profit, hospital-based and civil service agencies that are often embedded within Fire departments.

Is it any wonder that our nation spends more on healthcare than any nation on earth with the poorest outcomes? This entire episode is dedicated to EMS workers on the first Monday after national EMS week. America’s healthcare system is itself very sick, and our EMS professionals are the people best situated to give us an accurate diagnosis and the prescription for how we can make it less about profits and more about people.

Rev. Barber and I hear from FDNY Lt. Vincent Variale, president of DC 37’s Local 3621, which represents FDNY EMS officers. We also speak with FDNY EMT Esther Ford, who is secretary-treasurer at the Vulcan Society. In 2014, the organization secured a $98 million dollar settlement in a racial discrimination employment lawsuit for firefighters. EMS workers, however, were excluded.

Both Ford and Variale describe the “moral injury” experienced by their colleagues who put their lives on the line to help others despite being  grossly underpaid and understaffed, as well as often being the victims of assault and even murder.

Ford offers a tribute to FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo, single mother of five, who was murdered in 2017 by a homeless person whose father had gone to the local NYPD precinct because his son was no longer taking his psychiatric medication.

Variale provides a profile of FDNY Captain Alison Russo who was murdered in 2022 by a mentally ill man that Variale said was also not taking his medication.

In the second half of the show, we visit again with Wendell Potter, universal health care advocate and former top health insurance company executive turned whistleblower whose been helping to lead the national movement to create a healthcare system that puts people over profits. Wendell is joined by Jenn Coffey, a disabled EMS worker from Manchester, New Hampshire, and retired FDNY EMT Marianne Pizzitola, a 9/11 first-responder and president of the NYC Organization of Public Services Retirees. We hear first-hand from this panel about the perils of for-profit Medicare Advantage insurance plans that are neither Medicare, nor an advantage—and now also pose an existential threat to Medicare itself.

Listen to the entire show below: