UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 6, NUMBER 1 ~ SPRING 2012

CommonHealthMassachusetts Medicare for All Bill Gets a Hearing

The “Act for Improved Medicare for All in Massachu-setts: Providing Guaranteed, Affordable Health Care” - Mass-Care’s single-payer bill - came before the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing on December 15th. Despite barely a week’s notice, a respectable array of advocates offered testimony. Senator Dan Wolf spoke movingly of the inevitability of the leap to truly universal health care. Senator Jamie Eldridge and Professor Jerry Friedman spoke, as did Ben Day, Reverend Judy Deutsch, Leo Stolbach, MD, Carroll Eastman, MD, Katie Murphy, RN and Sandy Eaton, RN. US Senatorial candidate Marisa DeFranco argued forcefully for a just healthcare system. A fair number of supporters came to the event, although their numbers looked sparse in the expanse of Gardner Auditorium. - Sandy Eaton

Katie Murphy & Sandy Eaton

Single Payer Amendment Sparks Debate on State Senate FloorCongratulations to all the single-payer supporters who called their senators on a very short time-line to support Senator Jamie Eldridge’s single-payer amendment to the Senate’s Health Care Cost Control bill S.2066. The groundswell of support from a broad range of grassroots organizations from Mass-Care’s coalition sparked the first single-payer debate on the floor of the Senate and culminated with 15 out of 40 senators supporting it! Only six more senators are needed to pass single payer next time! Senator Eldridge said in his blog: “Many of my colleagues told me the phone just kept ringing with single-payer supporters. Some legislators who may have been wavering stood with us because they knew their constituents were watching. Others gave the amendment more serious consideration after initially dismissing it.” He went on to say: “We didn’t win on our amendment yesterday, it’s true ... However, yesterday’s vote was absolutely a victory – and it was a victory because of the grassroots.”

The amendment filed by Senator Eldridge would have implemented a plan to achieve a single-payer system (similar to the plan Vermont has established), but only if benchmarks on slowing the growth of healthcare costs demonstrated that a single-payer system would out-perform the cost control benchmarks in the present Cost Control bill S.2066. The Senate bill relies on various payment reform strategies and significant increases in regulatory control by the Division of Insurance to slow the growth in health care costs.

The 15 Senators who supported the single-payer amendment were: Senators Brownsberger, Chang-Diaz, Clark, Creem, DiDomenico, Donnelly, Downing, Eldridge, Fargo, Jehlen, McGee, Montigny, Pacheco, Rosenberg and Wolf. We need to thank these courageous senators for voting “yes” on amendment #125 despite opposition by the Senate leadership.

Senator Chang-Diaz stated during the floor debate: “It's foolish and stubborn for us to refuse to even look at what other countries and other states are getting right, and how they have been able to succeed or fail ... at providing high-quality health care at a lower cost." Senator Montigny said: “The first thing we have to do is admit right now in this climate the employer can’t pay their premiums and the insured cannot.”

The State House News reported that “(Senator) Brownsberger called the amendment ‘entirely consistent’ with the thrust of the underlying bill that aims to shave $150 billion in health care costs over 15 years,” and (Senator) “Pacheco suggested the amendment represented a warning to the industry that he said has failed to control its costs by showing them that lawmakers were serious about a l ternat i ves . ” Check out Mass-Care ’ s webs i te (www.masscare.org) for more information on the exact wording of the amendment, a summary of Senate Bill 2066 and other comments from senators. - Pat Berger

"I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is that, unless you have a single-payer system - in which everybody is automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual." - President Barack Obama, July 22, 2009

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 6, NUMBER 1 ~ SPRING 2012

Leo Stolbach, Judy Deutsch & Marsha! Deutsch

Ryles Jazz Club was once again the sett i ng for th i s year ’ s very successful Single Payer Gala. With lively, tuneful music by Joe Lillyman’s Jazz Ensemble, participants enjoyed delicacies catered by S&S deli. MC Katie Murphy kept the program moving, and it was a full one!

Pat Berger & Joe Li!yman

After Vic Bloomberg delivered some comments in appreciation of Dr. Ben Gill, Sandy Eaton, our first honoree, spoke about how he got involved in the movement for health care justice, stressing the importance of our new urban initiative.

Mike Fadel, Arnold Relman & Marcia Ange!

Our second honoree, Dr. Arnold Relman, was introduced with a New York Times video, making this Mass-Care’s bold step into the world of multi-media. Dr. Relman voiced his ongoing concern about the problem of viewing health care delivery as a business, making it impossible to control costs.

Abram Chipman, Sue Chipman & Mike Pattberg

Not only did we have the video, we also had a representative from Brookline Cable TV taping the entire event! (We look forward to seeing that on BAT in the near future.)

Cape Care Activist & Brian O’Ma!eywith Maria Termini in Background

We also had a sing-along as John Healey provided great new single-payer lyrics to the tune of “Teach Your Children.”

Merrie Eaton & Mark Dudzic

We were fortunate to have two excellent keynote speakers. Mark Dudzik, National Coordinator of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer, stressed that single payer will not be won without the strong leadership of labor.

Jeff Santos

Jeff Santos, host on Revolution Boston 1510 AM, emphasized the importance of raising the profile of s i n g l e p a y e r t h r o u g h o u t Massachusetts, and mentioned that we need to link up with celebrities, including professional sports figures.

Ben Day & Alexis Marvel

A third speaker, UMass student Alexis Marvel, spoke about the problem that students have with high hea lth insurance fees in the University of Massachusetts system. Mass-Care is happy to be supporting the students’ efforts to correct that situation. Ben Day ended the afternoon with brief comments about the upcoming Big Cities Campaign. - Bea Mikulecky

Fourteenth Annual Mass-Care Single Payer Gala: In Memory of Ben Gill

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 6, NUMBER 1 ~ SPRING 2012

Focus on SpringfieldThe Health Care Committee of the Amherst League of Women Voters – one of our Mass-Care coalition organizations – is working in Springfield to tell residents about single payer and the improved Medicare for All Massachusetts bill.  What we have learned to date is that very few people in Springfield know about single payer, much less the bill. We’ve got our work cut out – basic “hit the streets” grassroots work.

We have given three presentations in Springfield this spring: to the Rotary Club, to the Kiwanis Club and at a conference of Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice (WMJW). We have talked with two dozen people, from community leaders to non-profit directors to labor organizers. Every time we give presentations or sit down to talk, we bring Mass-Care hand-outs. We ask for help identifying more people to talk with, opportunities to speak to community groups and events where we can set up a table with information.  We’ve met wonderful people and look forward to working with them.

We now have a list of over three dozen names to follow up and have been making appointments. We have identified several large events where we want to set up an information table. Over the coming months, we will be talking with city councilors, religious leaders, community activists and people all over the city. We are not surprised that most people are reluctant “to jump on board right away.” As stated above, most of the folks are hearing about Mass-Care and the Massachusetts single-payer effort for the first time; it’s our job to tell them about the healthcare and financial benefits of single payer and Improved Medicare for All Massachusetts.

If you have any contacts in Springfield or would like to get involved in this effort, please contact Jackie Wolf (LWVAhealthcare@yahoo.com).

The Boston CampaignThe Boston Campaign for Single Payer will begin in earnest this month with eight interns available to start a vigorous outreach effort. We are updating our educational materials and will have them translated into Spanish and Portuguese. We will be contacting our coalition organizations with members in the Boston area to set up talks, rallies and workshops about how a single-payer system will guarantee medical coverage for all Massachusetts residents and make health care affordable for families, businesses and the Commonwealth. Please contact Mass-Care if you or a group you belong to would like to have a presentation about single-payer healthcare reform.

Worcester NextWe are gathering contact information, and identifying labor and community leaders to carry on this campaign in New England’s second-largest city. Let us know if you can help in any way.

What the State Legislature isProposing for Cost Control

America has been unable to control rising healthcare costs despite decades of attempted cost control measures. Massachusetts is about to pass its latest version of cost control legislation once the Conference Committee consolidates Senate bill S.2066 and the House bill HB.4070. The House and Senate bills have similarities, but the House bill sets tougher goals in cutting cost growth (the state GSP minus 0.5%), while the Senate is aiming for GSP plus 0.5%. Both bills establish independent authorities to collect data on health care costs and track the progress of their cost reduction goals. Both bills plan to use capitated Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) instead of the current fee-for-service payment system because current dogma insists that fee-for-service is causing costs to rise. Both the Senate and the House are mandating the use of electronic medical records. Both bills empower the Division of Insurance to regulate providers who get “unreasonable” compensation and to regulate insurers who raise premiums without justification or who pay different prices to different providers for the same services. Other payment reforms such as bundled payments, pay for performance, g lobal payments and shared savings are under consideration. Both bills promote preventive care, expansion of the number of primary care providers and transparency in pricing of services.

While some of these policies may reduce costs somewhat, and the obvious message to everyone involved in healthcare is that we must make healthcare affordable, it is not clear that all these policies work! There have been several pilot programs on ACOs in the past five years. None of them have shown a reduction in health costs. Electronic medical records are expensive to set up, and here in Massachusetts most systems can’t communicate with each other. Pay for performance has thus far been a disaster for physicians because the criteria used by the insurers to tier doctors for their “quality” are frequently inaccurate, bureaucratic and seem more often to promote doctors who cost the insurers less money rather than doctors who practice good medicine. Attorney General Martha Coakley has done two in-depth studies on the driving forces behind the rise in health care costs. She concludes that the price of each health service - not the volume of services - is driving up costs. This contradicts the idea that fee-for-service has been the major cost driver.

What Massachusetts really needs for cost control is a single-payer healthcare system: simple, universal, equitable, affordable, sustainable - and it works! - Pat Berger

Launching Three Cities Campaign

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 6, NUMBER 1 ~ SPRING 2012

National ActionTwo things are certain on the national healthcare front in the month of June: US Representative Jim McDermott's filing of a new bill to facilitate state single-payer systems and the US Supreme Court's verdict on the Affordable Care Act.

Speculation is rife on what the Supreme Court will decide, from sustaining PPACA as is to rendering it null and void and opening the door to state-based law suits against any federal social-service mandate. If the individual mandate is ruled unconstitutional, even if it can be separated from the rest of the act, the trillion-dollar commercial health insurance industry is not going to stand for federal regulations while missing out on the added millions of captured customers.

But no matter what the Supreme Court decides, the healthcare crisis will continue since the fundamental conflict between health care as a basic human need and social good, and health care as a vehicle for individual and corporate aggrandizement remains. We must win single-payer, Medicare for all as the next indispensable step on our road to a just healthcare system.

Besides keynoting our Ben Gill gala on April 21st, Mark Dudzic made good use of his visit to Massachusetts, securing the Massachusetts AFL-CIO’s recommitment to single payer through visits to its president Steve Tolman, to Myles Calvey of IBEW Local 2222 (Verizon workers) and to the officers and activists of IUE-CWA Local 201 (GE workers) and the North Shore Labor Council.

The Labor Campaign for Single Payer will be convening a strategy session in DC on June 26th, digesting the developments outlined above and doing some targeted lobbying. - Sandy Eaton

Help Needed: Join Our Publicity CommitteeWe need an active Mass-Care Publicity Committee to  achieve our goals to make health care a human r ight . We need to ident ify our publ ic ity needs,  develop a thorough publicity plan, and implement it.

We need to bring the good news about single-payer health care to everyone in the Commonwealth in a way that will make it easily understood and a household word in order to encourage people to support single-payer health care. We need to be clear, grassroots-oriented, persistent and with a defined visual presence that will give single-payer the publicity it needs. This is a very important effort and we need to put our heads together on it. 

Some ideas  I have are: creating a presence by tabling at public events, making our message very, very clear; T shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, branding, agreeing on our color (same color throughout the state); our own take-away literature; reach i ng med ia and organ i zat i ons , do i ng presentations to as many groups as possible, visibility, talk shows, letters to the editor, meet and greet at Fenway Park, passing out information, temporary tattoos, blimp advertising and so much more. But we need a plan. We also need more volunteers to help with tabling efforts. We may be able to get some pro bono help with publicity and PR.

Please contact me if you wish to be on the committee, or have some ideas and suggestions, or want to help with tabling.

In peace and solidarity,Maria Termini, Outreach Volunteer617 928 1544, leafdancer@verizon.net

Universal Health Care Education Fund c/o Mass-Care33 Harrison Avenue, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02111

P: 617-723-7001, F: 617-723-7002info@masscare.org http://www.masscare.org

CommonHealth, Volume 6, Number 1:Director: Benjamin DayEditor: Sandy EatonProduction: Erin ServaesCopy: Pat Berger, Sandy Eaton, Bea Mikulecky, Maria Termini, Jackie WolfPhotos: Sandy Eaton, Alice SwiftPrinting compliments of Massachusetts Nurses Association

Nurses take Chicago by storm on May 18th, demanding a financial transactions tax and improved Medicare for a!, reflected on the #ont page of the next morning’s Trib.