Spring 2007 issue of "CommonHealth," the biannual newsletter of the Universal Health Care Education Fund (UHCEF) and Mass-Care.

1. CommonHealth Volume 2, Number 4 ~ Spring 2007
Universal Health Care Education Fund
MASS-CARE Picking Up Steam
New Co-chairs Outline Plans for Coming Year
The incoming Co-Chairs of MASS-CARE, Pat Downs Outreach efforts using the cost-control agenda as an
Berger and Jackie Wolf, are enthusiastically setting up organizing tool can be done on many levels and should be
the agenda for the next year. Pat is a retired primary planned to target groups that will expand our influence
care physician who has been working with MASS-CARE with the legislature, strengthen our coalition, and improve
for the past ten years as a volunteer and recently as our financial situation. Key outreach efforts include:
Treasurer of MASS-CARE and UHCEF. Jackie Wolf has a. specific legislators on key committees or past
been an activist in the League of Women Voters on its supporters of single payer who need to be prodded
health care committee. Coming from Amherst she will help b. new groups that have a voice as “stakeholders”
coordinate MASS-CARE’s coalition in central and western such as business organizations, minority groups,
Massachusetts as well as adding her organizing expertise. doctors and nurses and municipalities
c. the governor’s office
In order to support our outreach efforts, MASS-CARE
needs two new committees that will give us the resources
to fulfill our agenda. The new committees are:
a. Fundraising to raise funds for MASS-CARE and
UHCEF over a year’s time, including grant writing,
newsletter publications, events, branded items for
sale and fundraising training sessions to enhance
our individual solicitations.
b. Media/Speakers Bureau committee to set up a
rapid response team to answer critics of Single
The mission of MASS-CARE continues to be enacting a Payer, set up speakers’ training sessions, train
Single Payer healthcare system for Massachusetts. MASS-CARE volunteers for lobbying our
Unfortunately the Massachusetts Legislature is focused legislators, maintain an active up-to-date web site,
on implementing the new health care law (Chapter 58) and establish a speakers’ bureau so all requests for
is very unlikely to consider the Single Payer Health Care presentations around the state can be honored, and
Trust bill (S.703) this year. We can, however, try to cultivate op-ed writers, letters-to-the-editor, radio
advance a legislative program that will lead us toward a show interviews and local access TV opportunities.
Single Payer system. Therefore, the focus of our work for
the next year should be to advance a cost-control agenda. We need volunteers for any of the jobs in either of
For this reason we believe that working to form a these committees in order to be successful in our efforts
powerful coalition to push cost control legislation is an to strengthen our coalition for Single Payer health care.
effective way to recruit new partners and to continue to We especially would appreciate grant writers,
mobilize support for a Single Payer health care system. fundraisers, media contacts, speakers and a web site
Current cost control legislation we are supporting: guru.
a. Bulk purchasing bill to lower the cost of drugs
b. Uniform billing to simplify the bureaucracy Pat and Jackie are looking forward to a productive year
c. Regulation of insurance companies to reduce the with you, our volunteers, to bring us closer to a single
percent of the health care premium dollar spent on payer health care system for Massachusetts.
marketing, lobbying and profits, and maximize the
amount spent on direct medical care.

2. 2007 Ben Gill Gala
Supporters of the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Sharing the honor this year is Grace Ross, known to all as
Payer Health Care (MASS-CARE) and its nonprofit the gubernatorial candidate who stuck to the basic issues
educational partner, the Universal Health Care Education which affect us all, including the need for real healthcare
Fund (UHCEF), gathered to raise money for the cause and reform. Her campaign continues unflaggingly as she works
to celebrate the growing grassroots movement for with MASS-CARE and legislators to craft and bundle
fundamental reform. pieces of legislation that complement the Massachusetts
Health Care Trust bill, our single-payer focus, and seek to
address cost-containment issues not dealt with by Chapter
58, the current health reform legislation.
Participatory workshops explored such issues as health
care and immigrant rights, responding to the individual
mandate and developing a cost control agenda. Report-
backs allowed for a sharing of concerns and insights in
these areas.
Greetings were brought
to this celebration by
Mayor Kenneth Reeves
On March 24th, scores of people from all across and State
Massachusetts assembled in the Ryles Jazz Club in Representative Alice
Cambridge to honor two champions in the fight for a Wolf. Leaders of such
healthcare system that provides high-quality, coalition partners as
comprehensive, affordable care to all. Spirited music by Jobs with Justice, the
members of the Consortium for Psychotherapy punctuated Massachusetts Senior
the afternoon, led by Joseph Lillyman. Richard Sherman Action Council,
brought insights into the life and times of Dr. Benjamin Physicians for a National Health Program, the
Gill. Massachusetts Nurses Association, the League of Women
Voters, the Consortium for Psychotherapy, the Ethical
The keynote was delivered by Dr. Society, DSA, JALSA and so
Arnold Relman, editor emeritus of many others joined in.
the New England Journal of
Medicine and MASS-CARE UHCEF president and former
Advisory Board member, who Cambridge mayor Barbara
would shortly be traveling to Ackermann introduced Mayor
Saskatchewan with Dr. Marcia Reeves, who shared his vision of
Angell to confer with Canadians the necessity of a just healthcare
in struggle to avoid the pitfalls of system for the good of the whole
market medicine. community.
The first recipient of the Dr. Benjamin Gill Memorial The event was a success by any standard.
Award this year is Barbara Sullivan, a graduate of the
Quincy City Hospital School of Nursing who retired from
state service in 1989. For many years Barbara chaired the
Health Care Committee of the Massachusetts League of
Women Voters, providing testimony and leading Only 25% of our annual budget is met through
delegations up Beacon Hill. Her courage in the face of the Ben Gill Gala. Please give generously to this
quarterly appeal. Individual members and affiliated
some contrary legislators continues to inspire those newer
organization are our lifeblood. Thank you for your
to this experience.
ongoing support. We’ve all got a lot of work ahead of us.

3. Testimony Before Massachusetts Connector Authority (abridged)
Benjamin Day, Executive Director, MASS-CARE, May 29, 2007
The state is poised to conduct a very dangerous onto the sick and the injured. Those who are lucky enough
experiment in health reform by essentially punishing the not to need medical care will pay less, while those unlucky
uninsured if they do not purchase health coverage as a enough to need care will pay more than they would under
commodity on the private market. This is dangerous the plan with higher premiums.
because requiring individuals to purchase health care as a
commodity is the most regressive way of paying for Plans with high cost sharing virtually guarantee that
health care – more regressive than employer-sponsored enrollees will not increase their usage of preventive care
insurance, and much, much more regressive than paying or be encouraged to seek early intervention.
for healthcare like we pay for Medicare or Medicaid,
through payroll or income taxes. In a way, the appointees to the Connector Board have
been charged with a very unfair task. You have been
asked to extend insurance to the uninsured, an extremely
important task, but the primary tool you have been given
to pay for extended coverage is the regressive financing
mechanism of requiring the uninsured to pay fixed sums
out of their own pockets. The public funding to
supplement this task has been woefully inadequate since
the new law raised almost no new funds, and any further
resources must be squeezed out of the General Funds. You
have been asked to treat one horrible symptom of our
health care crisis by reducing the growing ranks of the
uninsured, but you have been given no tools with which to
address the causes of that health care crisis: no means of
controlling the underlying costs of health care, no means
of reducing the inequalities or price disparities of the
health system.
We also pay for health care within a system that has no
effective cost controls, and the costs of health care have Over a dozen employer mandates have been passed in
been rising out of control for many years now. states across the country, including in Massachusetts in
1988, but all but one have gone unimplemented simply
MASS-CARE is opposed to individual mandates for because mandating the purchase of ever-more-expensive
exactly this reason, because individual mandates manage health care results in significant backlash ...
to impose a regressive burden on the uninsured without
controlling costs. There was not a single grassroots The full text of Ben’s remarks are posted on Seachange
organization that I am aware of that pushed for Bulletin (http://seachange.wbumpus.com/?q=node/10708).
individual mandates during the law’s formulation, so it is or may be obtained by calling the office. Ben’s expanded
essentially a framework for insuring the uninsured that analysis of “consumer-driven” health care and the
lacks a popular base of support. But nonetheless this is individual mandate, “Force-feeding health insurance:
the framework within which we are discussing Labor and the push for individual mandates,” will be
affordability and minimum creditable coverage, and a few published shortly in the academic quarterly WorkingUSA
important things should be said. for June 2007. His pioneering powerpoint presentation on
Chapter 58 and all such incremental attempts at reform
One response to the prohibitively expensive cost of health can be accessed from the MASS-CARE web site.
insurance has been to introduce plans with high
deductibles, copayments and coinsurance. These have been This issue: Executive Director Benjamin Day;
disingenuously referred to as more “affordable,” but Editor, Sandy Eaton; copy: Pat Berger, Sandy Eaton,
there is nothing more affordable about plans with high Ann Eldridge Malone, Jackie Wolf; photos: Pat
cost sharing. The only difference between a high- Berger, Sandy Eaton, Riley Ohlson; layout: Erin
Servaes, Chris Doucette; printing compliments of the
deductible plan and a high premium plan with no
Massachusetts Nurses Association.
deductible, is that the high-deductible plan shifts costs

4. MASS-CARE on Beacon Hill MASS-CARE in Coalition
Besides our Executive Director’s stirring testimony On March 7th, Pat Berger, Carlos Da Silva, Sandy Eaton
before the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector and Julie Pinkham, members of MASS-CARE’s Advisory
Board in Gardner Auditorium on May 29th, MASS-CARE Board, joined with Stop & Shop workers, members of the
has kept a high profile on Beacon Hill. United Food & Commercial Workers Union, and many,
many others in a successful rally to block cost-shifting of
On January 2nd we witnessed the tragic demise of the health insurance costs at the bargaining table. Pat and
citizens’ initiative to amend the state constitution to Julie got their turns at the microphone, putting this
make access to affordable, comprehensive health struggle into a broader context.
insurance the right of all who reside here. Senator
Richard Moore, Senate chair of the Joint Committee on
Health Care Financing, publicly cited Chapter 58, the
“Massachusetts miracle,” as the reason for doing in the
amendment initiative.
On February 27th, we organized a legislative briefing on
cost-containment bills now being considered. Former
Massachusetts Insurance Commissioner and MASS-CARE
Advisory Board member Peter Hiam prefaced the meeting
with the rationale for moving to a single-payer system.
Alan Sager brought further data to bear on the enormous
waste in the system. An aide to Senator Mark Montigny
presented the facts on bulk purchasing of
pharmaceuticals. Senator Pat Jehlen discussed her bill to MASS-CARE participates in the Massachusetts Labor for
cap insurance company overhead. Senator Steve Tolman, Health Care coalition, many of whose organizations had
lead Senate sponsor of the Massachusetts Health Care come together to advance the healthcare constitutional
Trust bill and MASS-CARE Advisory Board member, amendment. We host meetings of the Health Care Action
presented the work he and Senator Bruce Tarr have been Committee of Jobs with Justice in our new office, and
doing to achieve a uniform billing system in the are engaged in efforts to block cost-shifting onto Quincy
Commonwealth. On a slightly more controversial note, teachers and Lynn GE workers.
Representative Rachel Kaprielian discussed the proposal to
move municipal workers into the plans brokered by the
Commonwealth’s Group Insurance Commission. Scores of
legislators and their aides made it standing room only.
Since then, MASS-CARE has presented testimony in
support of bulk purchasing and uniform billing.
On Wednesday, July 18th, the Joint Committee on
Health Care Financing will take testimony on a raft of
bills, including the Massachusetts Health Care Trust and
Senator Jehlen’s insurance company overhead caps. Try
to arrange your schedule to be in the State House that
Universal Health Care Education Fund (UHCEF)
day. MASS-CARE and friends will be organizing
c/o MASS-CARE
testimony once again. Your presence and support will let
33 Harrison Avenue, Fifth Floor
all know that there can be a better, more just way to
Boston, MA 02111
enhance health and well-being. Make sure you’re on our
P: 617-723-7001
contact list so you’ll be sent all the details as they
F: 617-723-7002
become known.
info@masscare.org
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