Tag: 2020

Honoring the Legacy of an Urban Planning Pioneer

Leo Estrada built a legacy fighting for civil rights, voting rights and equal representation for Latinos during his 40-years at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. Estrada was a pioneer in the field of urban planning, providing his expertise to the U.S. Census Bureau throughout his career. Estrada passed away in 2018, and the Luskin School established a fellowship in his honor, proving support to underrepresented graduate students in the Department of Urban Planning. Recently, the Luskin School paid tribute to Estrada with a daylong symposium centered around the lessons of his work.

The New Majority & the 2020 Census: Shifting the Balance of Power

In his keynote address, Arturo Vargas, president and CEO of the NALEO Educational Fund discusses the importance of the census, and the long history of efforts to avoid counting immigrants and minorities. Indeed, the Hispanic origin question was only added to the census in the 1970s, when Leo Estrada was working at the U.S. Census Bureau. Vargas calls the controversial proposal to require undocumented immigrants to identify themselves a scare tactic, aimed at decreasing representation in Washington. He details other challenges ahead, and what must be done to overcome them.

Demography & Population Studies as a Conduit to Systems Change

Quality data is paramount to ensuring equal representation. If we don’t know who is living in our communities, we can’t create and maintain the systems needed to care for and support those communities. In this panel discussion, experts on data collection, Chicano studies and urban planning discuss the challenges of getting good data, and how to turn data into action.

The Historical Exclusion of Minority Elected Officials & The Modern Fight for Minority-Majority Districts

Leo Estrada had a major impact on redistricting in California. This panel discussion features former elected officials, legal and political experts discussing how Estrada worked to ensure people of color achieved equal representation in the legislature. Not only was his expertise and data collection essential in understanding the makeup of California communities, but it also proved invaluable in recruiting the best candidates.

Mentorship: Building a Diverse Pipeline in the Academy

Leo Estrada’s legacy lives on in the scores of people he mentored over his decades-long career. This panel of academics, who crossed paths with Estrada at various points in their lives, discusses the lessons learned from his unique form of mentorship. They explain how making it in academia can be especially difficult for people from underrepresented communities, and how Estrada’s methods could be used to get more students from those communities through higher education.

Watch — The New Majority & the 2020 Census: Shifting the Balance of Power

Americans’ Views on Healthcare

At the root, healthcare is a pocketbook issue. An increasing share of insured Americans report difficulty affording healthcare. Deductibles are rising – growing more than four times faster than wages – and causing worry, especially over unexpected medical bills that ripple families and their budgets.

Drew Altman, President and CEO of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, provides an analysis of the public’s priorities and opinions in healthcare as the new congress takes shape and the 2020 presidential campaign begins.

Using polling data, he shows that in the midterms, healthcare was a top issue for Democrats and Independents but not for Republicans. The Democrats perceived that the ACA was under threat and rallied behind that issue. That helped propel them to large gains in the House.

Altman predicts that with that new Democratic-majority some of the big moves proposed in the last two years will not happen. These include repeal and replace of the ACA, changing Medicaid to include caps or block grants, and changing Medicare to a voucher system. He further predicts that no major health legislation will be passed at all except perhaps some bipartisan legislation on drugs.

With the huge partisan divide on the ACA – 81% of Democrats approve versus only 17% of Republicans – there are obvious limits to passing any national health care reform, even though generally the public highly values many of the key benefits of the ACA. Simultaneously, public knowledge about what the ACA does is actually spotty. For example, Altman cites polls that show that 41% wrongly believe that the ACA established “death panels.”

As the 2020 presidential election heats up, Altman shows that healthcare will continue to be a big issue with Medicare-for-all perhaps out in front of the others. There are many misconceptions about this kind of plan including the costs and benefits of a single-payer system.

When it comes to Medicaid, sweeping change proposed by the Republicans is unlikely. Polls show that it is generally more well-liked than some people acknowledge, almost as popular as other big programs like Medicare and Social Security, in part because it covers almost 75 million people. There are lurking issues such as work requirements but most Americas want to keep it as it is, affordable insurance for low income people.

Watch The Pulse of the Public on Health Policy and Politics – The Chancellor’s Health Policy Lecture Series