CommonHealthVolume 2, Number 2 ~ Spring 2006

Universal Health Care Education Fund

Message from Executive Director Benjamin Day

Dear Friends and Supporters of Single Payer Health Care,

It is now too warm to be the winter of our discontent, but as the seasons turned this year, Massachusetts passed “landmark” new health care Legislation that is leaving many of us wondering if discontent might not be a year-round job. For the first time anywhere in the world, we have passed a law requiring individuals to buy their own health insurance, most without any assistance whatsoever. We have designed a penalty for employers not covering their workers that is so cheap and ineffective, it could hardly be used to subsidize office supplies, much less the families we can now expect to be pushed off of corporate health care rolls. There is more than enough discontent to go around, as our skyrocketing health care costs, which ultimately make universal coverage so difficult, have been left in the hands of HMOs and private insurance companies to swell even further. Unions will continue having to fight off concessions and cost-shifting, and our senior

population will continue to face unaffordable out-of-pocket costs not covered by Medicare.

MASS-CARE and its nonprofit sister organization, the Universal Health Care Education Fund, would like to ask you for your support this year as we ramp up our organizing efforts at this crucial juncture. MASS-CARE has recently reorganized itself in order to build a dues-paying membership base, and we will be working in the immediate future to support and politicize the communities most affected by this Bill; act as a clearing house for getting timely information and analyses from progressive health care experts to the rest of the movement; and fight to put real health care reform back on the table for everyone. We have our work cut out for us, but we look forward to reengaging with MASS-CARE’s member organizations, with health care reform activists across the state, and with the communities and families who desperately need a voice and a movement for their health.

MASS-CARE needs your support for the Eighth Annual Dr. Benjamin Gill Memorial Award Reception, which will be held this year on Saturday, May 13, at the Dante Alighieri Cultural Center in Cambridge, a ten-minute wall from the Kendall/MIT stop on the MBTA’s Red Line.

We will be honoring the outstanding contributions of three exceptional activists and scholars in the field of health care reform: Margaret O’Malley of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar of Boston University’s School of Public Health.

We are also planning to have a teaching session about the new bill and what we have to do to move the single payer plan forward. This session will begin at 3:00 and end at 4:45. Food and beverage will be available around 5:00, with the program slated to begin at 5:30. The program will include talks by veteran strategists and political activists, as well as music from the string ensemble of the Consortium for Psychotherapy. A silent auction will be held during the program.

We are asking individuals who attend to contribute $35 or whatever is reasonable for you. Please feel welcome to bring significant or insignificant others, and children or friends. We hope to see you all there!

Table of ContentsPage 1: Executive Director’s MessagePage 2: MASS-CARE Statement

on Romney Insurance BillMembership Drive

Page 3: Here’s what people are sayingPage 4: Dr. Benjamin Gill Gala

JwJ Health Care Action

The New “Universal“ Health Bill“Health care bill will disappoint, hurt low-income families,” say advocates and policy experts

Statement by the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care, April 2006

If the new much touted bill is kinder to insurance companies that to the low-income uninsured, we should not be surprised. We were told on April 5th by Scott Helman of the Globe that lobbyists for insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies  and big hospitals had increased their spending by a third while the bill was being debated.

Many uninsured are required by the bill to purchase some form of insurance through the private market or face stiff penalties on their tax forms. Even a stripped-down, poor quality plan is likely to cost more than they can afford, and the bill does not raise enough costs to subsidize even a fraction of these new costs. It raises only $170 million a year which, according to Alan Sager, is “a drop in the bucket of Massachusetts health care where spending this year will be $59 billion.” Uninsured individuals who are at three times the poverty line, and to whom the bill promises no financial assistance, will be forced to pay over 20 percent of their income to cover health care insurance, according to the best estimates available. While real incomes for the poor have been falling, and may continue to fall, the insurance  costs they will now have to pay are likely to continue to rise. Furthermore, “the bill will worsen the complex and costly administrative system that wastes funds needed to pay for actual health services,” says Alice Rothschild, MD, Board President of the Alliance to Defend Health Care. The bill is also likely to encourage employers currently providing health care for their work force to push employees into the individual mandate, as the fees imposed on employers not covering their workers are far lower than the costs of the poorest quality workforce health plans in the state. 

“This bill is going to exacerbate the crisis in Massachusetts health care,” comments Sandy Eaton, RN, Chair of MASS-CARE, an association of ninety state organizations who all believe a single-payer program is the least expensive and most effective way to solve our enormous problems in paying for first-class health care. It will move more people into individual health plans, the costliest and most wasteful insurance plans on the planet, without taking any steps to contain the costs that neither the state and its employers nor its residents can afford. Only a plan that consolidates health care finance and streamlines delivery can provide quality sustainable health care for all. Such a plan is the single-payer model adopted successfully in much of the rest of the world, whose costs are less than ours while their citizens are generally healthier.”

Announcing an historic turn for MASS-CARE

On April 8th, the MASS-CARE Coordinating Committee voted to launch an individual-member wing of our statewide movement to create a just healthcare system. The goal is to establish a grassroots base for change in each legislative district. As each local organizing committee reaches ten members, it will have a seat on the MASS-CARE CC, with voice and vote. We hope to replicate the excellent ferment generated by such constituents as the Franklin-Hampshire Health Care Coalition and Berkshire MASS-CARE in every corner of Massachusetts.

We urge all supporters to take the pledge to campaign for healthcare justice, to fill out the pledge form and send it to our Beacon Street office with $25. Of course no one will be kept away for lack of funds, and the extra-generous support of so many should continue. The response from groups and individuals to our December appeal was so gratifying that we feel confident in hiring a full-time executive director/organizer.

Here’s what people are saying

"American health care corporations and insurance companies are right next door to us and have been hankering for years to break up public medicare in Canada and sell us on their profit-focused schemes that leave so many Americans without proper health care." - Debra McPherson, British Columbia Nurses Union, February 15, 2006

“[W]hen it comes to improving coverage, state government conceived an elephant but gave birth to a mouse.” - Alan Sager, PhD, BU School of Public Health, March 20, 2006

“The recent healthcare compromise is a completely one-sided victory for the business sector.” - Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert J. Haynes, April 3, 2006

"Who would have thought that Massachusetts would take a page out of the Newt Gingrich playbook for health care reform?" - John Sweeney, AFL-CIO, April 5, 2006

“Massachusetts politicians just built the healthcare McMansion of their dreams. Now, where do they get the money... ?” - Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, April 6, 2006

“Could this bill be yet another juggernaut, a Medicare Part ‘D’ clone, which ... is merely a thinly masked windfall for HMOs?” - David A Hopkins, Colrain, April 6, 2006

''The only redeeming part of the bill is that it says it will provide absolute coverage for the very poorest citizens. If there isn't enough money to meet those obligations, then what?" - Secretary of State Bill Galvin, April 6, 2006

“We are up against the 7.5 million dollars lobbyists received to secure the ‘compromise’ legislation and the interests of the ‘stakeholders’ AIM, BC/BS, Harvard Pilgrim, Massachusetts Hospital Association, Eli Lily, Partners Healthcare System.” - John Horgan, JwJ & IBEW, April 7, 2006

“Our consistent opposition to such concepts as the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, proposed last summer by Governor Mitt Romney and spelled out last October in a report from the Urban Institute commissioned by the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts, stands unshaken.” - Sandy Eaton, RN, MASS-CARE, April 7, 2006

“Your reports about Massachusetts' health reform legislation treat politicians' overblown claims as gospel.” - D. Himmelstein & S. Woolhandler, NYT, April 9, 2006

“Want affordable, quality, sustainable health care for all? Get a plan that consolidates health care finance, streamlines delivery, and eliminates waste (including advertising, lobbying, and union-busting costs).” - Jon Weisman, NALC & JwJ, April 10, 2006

“If we were to take the $9,100/year per person that we spend in Massachusetts ... and use it for health care rather than insurance company profits, we would be able to provide truly universal, affordable, continuous, equitable and comprehensive care ... .” - Susanne King, MD, Lenox, Berkshire Eagle, April 11, 2006

“The interests of insurers, hospitals, and employers have been well-addressed. But there is nothing for those who are, and have been, on their own and self-insured.” - Lorllyn Allan, Somerset, Boston Globe, April 12, 2006

“The Beacon Hill solution is little more than a giveaway to the insurance companies. So many new customers!” - Kathleen Bridgewater, Amherst LWV, April 16, 2006

“Although the editorial page may tell you to rejoice, we would tell you to organize.” - Benjamin Day, MASS-CARE, Boston Globe, April 16, 2006

“Business can now pay $295 a year per employee instead of a couple of thousand, so they'll do what? Drop good plans, pay the cheap fee, and come out way ahead.” - Ric Gerace, Falmouth, Boston Globe, April 16, 2006

“Romney said, ‘The old single-payer canard is gone.’ No, it isn't. Sooner or later, that is exactly what we'll need if we're really serious about universal healthcare.” - Marcia Angell, MD, Boston Globe, April 17, 2006

“The solution that would really put healthcare dollars, and providers, to their best use would be a single-payer system - namely, government-funded health coverage for all.” - Benjamin Brewer, MD, Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2006

“The real news is that the insurance will have more holes than Swiss cheese, won't curtail skyrocketing health care costs.” - James O'Keefe, Grace Ross, Jill Stein, Owen R. Broadhurst, Nat Fortune, Somerville Jour.., April 20, 2006

"If you follow the money trail of wasted dollars in our health care system, you'll find yourself at the doorstep of the multiple private insurance companies who waste up to 30% of the health premium dollar on non-medical items including advertising, lobbying, profits and huge CEO salaries." - Patricia Downs Berger, MD, April 21, 2006

MASS-CARE & UHCEF invite you to the:

Annual Dr. Benjamin Gill Memorial Awards Dinner

Dante Alighieri Cultural Center41 Hampshire Street, Cambridge

ten-minute walk from Kendall/MITstop on MBTA’s Red Line

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Activists’ Training @ 3:00 PMRegistration @ 5:00 PM

Program @ 5:30 PMHot & Cold Hors d'oeuvres - Cash Bar

Silent AuctionDonation: $35

This year’s honorees:

Margaret O’Malley, RN, Massachusetts Nurses Association

Alan Sager, PhD & Deborah Socolar, MPHBoston University School of Public Health

For more information & reservations,call MASS-CARE/UHCEF @ 617-723-7001info@masscare.org - www.masscare.org

Jobs with Justice Health Care Action Comm.

Left to right: Charlie Rasmussen, MNA; Dawn Martinez, BLHG; Peter Knowlton, UE; Ben Day, MASS-CARE; Paul Cannon, IBT; Sandy Eaton, MASS-CARE ; Rand Wilson, IUE-CWA; Ann Eldridge-Malone & Maurice Malone, ADHC; John Horgan, IBEW; Ariana Flores, JwJ; Shawn Leblanc, CWA; Timothy Bergeron, CWA; missing: Marc Blum, who’s taking the picture.

MASS-CARE proudly participates in such progressive coalitions as JwJ in both Western and Eastern Massachusetts. Thanks to Rand Wilson for this snapshot of some of the attendees at the April 12th JwJ Health Care Action Committee meeting in Boston, working to support the constitutional amendment to make access to affordable health insurance the right of all Massachusetts residents and building support for Congressman Conyers’ Medicare for All bill, HR.676.

Universal Health Care Education Fund (UHCEF)c/o MASS-CARE

8 Beacon Street, Suite 26Boston, MA 02108P: 617-723-7001F: 617-723-7002

info@masscare.orgwww.masscare.org