UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1 ~ FALL 2008

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CommonHealthMass-Care’s 2008 Accomplishments

• Debunking the myth that Chapter 58, our current health reform law, should be a model for the nation. Mass-Care has recently co-authored with Massachusetts Jobs with Justice an eight-page pamphlet explaining the law, its successes and failures, and distributed it widely in the state and beyond.

• Acting as the fiscal agent for Cape Care, which has been coordinating a single payer health plan for Cape Cod and the Islands. (see article on Cape Care)

• Working on cost-control legislation. Mass-Care was a key supporter of uniform billing which was included in the cost control bill passed into law this past summer. Mass-Care produced a report for the Office of Health and Human Services on how bulk purchasing of pharmaceuticals by the state through a single non-profit purchasing pool would lower its drug costs. Mass-Care is working with the administration to implement the recommendations of the report.

• Expanding our grassroots outreach. Mass-Care activists pushed the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) to include single payer reform as one of the options it lists for achieving universal health care. Mass-Care has given 22 talks at Rotary clubs all over the state to reach out to the business community. All the major Unions in MA have joined the coalition to work for single payer. This movement is truly significant in both the number and importance of the unions making single payer a priority for the next year. Mass-Care and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) are working together to build chapters of doctors, residents and medical students in the state. Mailings from PNHP and Mass-Care have generated about 40 speaking events at hospitals and medical schools on single payer reform. Mass-Care now has over 100 member organizations.

• Redesigning the Mass-Care website to include downloadable handouts about single payer, in-depth fact sheets on Chapter 58, health care disparities, health care costs and cost control legislation. The goal is to make masscare.org the leading online resource for universal single payer advocates.

• Educational efforts through the media. Mass-Care’s activists as well as members of our Advisory Board have produced dozens of op-ed articles, letters to the editor, peer-reviewed journal submissions and radio interviews on single payer healthcare reform. We have become a leading resource for media seeking a critical perspective from a progressive standpoint on healthcare reform.

• Sponsoring a ballot question supporting single payer healthcare reform that was overwhelmingly approved by the voters on November 4th. Ten districts across the state had an average of 73% approval. This is a monumental endorsement by the general public of a single payer health care system for Massachusetts.

Volunteer for Mass-Care!Mass-Care not only has opportunities for volunteers, we need you!• Join your local district team to lobby your

Senator and Representative.• Host a fundraising house party for Mass-

Care or join one.• We need a website developer for a new

website comparing insurance companies on how much money they waste on overhead, executive salaries, marketing, etc.

• We need grant writers to help us obtain funding.

• We need speakers to speak at events all over the state.

• We need people who will write letters to the editor and op-eds.

• We need activists to lead new outreach programs in MA, including: Outreach to religious organizations, business for single payer, and municipalities for single payer.

Please call Mass-Care 617-723-7001 or email info@masscare.org if you would like to volunteer!

Lobby Day January 13thLobby Day for our refiled Health Care Trust bill will be a chance for all our supporters to come to the State House for a briefing about our Single Payer bill and to visit our legislators asking them to sign on to our bill. The briefing will include several speakers to highlight the specifics of the bill and the reasons why it will benefit all Massachusetts residents and cost less. There will also be a short training to offer some tips on how to approach your legislators and there will be some great packets of information for your Senators and Reps.  It is vitally important that Single Payer supporters turn out in force to make it clear that incremental reform doesn’t work and Single Payer is the way to go.

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1 ~ FALL 2008

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Could this be the legislative session?As the state looks at continuing cutbacks and Chapter 58 continues to cost more, could this be the session for single-payer? We have great news from the huge margins of success in the ten districts of our single payer advisory ballot question. Significant outreach campaigns to small business circles are reaping incredibly strong support. The national mayors’ conference has come out for single-payer as has our own state AFL-CIO leadership – ripe we hope to turn into support for our statewide bill.

In this context, we look forward to re-filing our single-payer Health Care Trust bill by January 14, and your Legislative Committee has been working assiduously since the summer to further improve our very good current bill, consider our strategy for building more support and address the more concrete questions and expectations that will come as we get closer to making single-payer a reality in our state.

Please contact us to get involved by being your district’s liaison with your legislators, by joining our small business or union outreach teams, or helping with our municipal research and outreach efforts!

The principal changes being made to our Health Care Trust bill are:

1. the addition of a table of contents so as to enable readers to more easily find the subjects for which they are looking;2. a listing of specific funding sources that include a tax on gross payrolls, a tax on employee compensation, a self-employment

payroll tax, and a tax on dividends;3. a separate section on financing that will make it very clear that the Health Care Trust will utilize global budgeting.

We are grateful to Senator Tolman and Representative Hynes who previously served as lead sponsors of our bill; however, we appreciate that Senator Tolman's new position as Democratic whip and Representative Hynes’ retirement necessitate their no longer holding these positions. We are very pleased that Senator Jehlen has agreed to be the new lead Senate sponsor and we are negotiating with a few representatives about who will be the new lead House sponsor.

During the current legislative session, Mass-Care decided to work also on measures that protected healthcare quality but cut costs. Your legislative committee, therefore, worked for three cost containment measures: uniform billing; a care-ratio [stipulating how much of each health care premium-dollar should go for actual health care]; and negotiation for, and bulk-purchasing of, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. If passed and implemented, these would be foundational components of the Health Care Trust when it is enacted. We are very pleased that uniform billing was included in Senator Murray's cost-containment bill that passed last Summer, and shall work during the next session to get the other cost-containment measures passed and implemented.

This is the year to ramp up now and get as many serious commitments among legislators as possible as co-sponsors of our bills. Together with our Executive Director Ben Day and Legislative Consultant Grace Ross, we shall organize a lobby day on January 13th to get more legislative sponsors. Please look for a fuller announcement at the end of this year and please plan to attend – a show of force at the beginning of the new legislative session will be noted.

We volunteer committee members (Pat Berger, Vic Bloomberg, chair Judy Deutsch, Sandy Eaton, Bea Mikulecky, Leo Stolbach and Jackie Wolf) are grateful for the help that Grace and Ben have given us all along the way, and for the hard work that they do towards the goal of getting the Massachusetts Health Care Trust bill enacted and implemented.

CommonHealth, Volume 3, Number 1:

Director: Benjamin Day Copy: Pat Berger Jim HerbertEditor: Sandy Eaton Judy Deutsch Brian O’MalleyProduction: Erin Servaes Sandy Eaton Grace RossPrinting compliments of the Massachusetts Nurses Association Jackie Wolf

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

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1 ~ FALL 2008

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Cape Care Ramps UpThe Cape Care Coalition has moved toward the introduction, early in January, of enabling legislation for our proposed Cape Care Community Health Trust. “Community-owned health care for Cape Cod,” we call it. The bill will mirror the model system we envision, developed in extensive detail in our Draft Model Plan, available at http://www.capecare.info. The development of the Plan has been the product of years of regular meetings and discussions with our neighbors around its many, many elements.

Cape Care was born of a single-payer, social justice liaison. As we worked with it, the power of the single-payer model to organize specifically around the delivery of high quality effective healthcare became more evident. And even more so, in the community model, the power of lifestyle issues such as access to healthful, local food, and to exercise and social opportunities, and the effective and cost-saving role of public health approaches to disease prevention and control, became more and more clearly, central elements. So many of the truly cost-controlling and health-promoting aspects are only feasible within a community or universal model. (We distinguish these, as Cape Care will, of necessity, a choice, not a mandate, and therefore not truly universal.) In order to provide the best available plan, with comprehensive benefits, we are considering enrollment premiums for enrollees "subsidized" by a County-based property health tax, and a small payroll tax.)

Our discussions with political representatives have been very supportive, and we are currently meeting with leadership as we finish work on the Cape Care bill. Concerning the Chapter 58 program, we have pointed out the great difficulties that Commonwealth Connector folks have finding anyone to accept their cards, and get care, on the Cape - and indicated our intent to be the default Connector plan here. Full coverage, full access for all.

We will be seeking the support of legislators statewide for this strongly supported Community Health Plan demonstration project. Please let them know.

Brian O’Malley, MD

See our new brochure on Chapter 58 of the Acts of 2006 on our web site. You can also download it and print it out. Or contact the Mass-Care office for copies. Developed and produced in conjunction with Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, ‘Massachusetts Health Reform: Solution or Stopgap?’ provides answers to many of our questions, explains the good and bad points of this law, and points to the single-payer solution to the ongoing crisis in access, affordability and quality of our current healthcare system. It also tells readers where to go to learn more and to get involved.

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE EDUCATION FUND ~ VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1 ~ FALL 2008

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Overwhelming Victory for Single Payer Ballot QuestionOn November 4th, the local ballot initiative supporting single payer and opposing individual mandates passed by landslide margins in all ten legislative districts where it appeared. The measure passed with margins ranging from 65% in the Fifth Middlesex to 83% in the Third Hampshire. Nearly 73 percent of 180,000 voters saud yes to the following: "Shall the representative from this district be instructed (1) to support legislation that establishes health care as a human right regardless of age, state of health or employment status, by creating a single payer health insurance system that is comprehensive, cost effective, and publicly provided to all residents of Massachusetts, and (2) to oppose any laws penalizing the uninsured for failing to obtain health insurance.”

National FocusAll eyes are now focused on Washington, with major health reform legislation felt to be more likely to pass now than in many years. Will something akin to the Massachusetts hybrid model, with or without individual mandates, carry the day, or will single payer in the form of strengthened and improved Medicare for All come into its own?

Mass-Care’s Ben Day went to the Leadership Conference on Guaranteed Health Care November 10 & 11 at the AFL-CIO’s Washington head-quarters. This national coalition-in-formation strives to unite all single payer groups around a winning strategy for Representative John Conyer’s bill HR.676. The California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare-NOW and Progressive Democrats of America convened this meeting and will take the lead in getting this organization off the ground. Ben reports that “virtually everyone in the room - all 80 to 100 single payer activists - knew about our successful ballot initiatives, and I think our work on this, on getting so many of our Congressional delegation on HR.676 (which Massachusetts Jobs with Justice can take most of the credit for!) and the work we've done on Chapter 58 has earned us a lot of respect in the national single payer movement.”

Parallel to this, Labor for Single Payer will be launched at a conference in Saint Louis on January 10 & 11. All labor organizations that support the passage of HR.676 are invited to attend and participate in launching a dynamic campaign for the only workable solution to today’s healthcare crisis, working within and through the labor movement.

Massachusetts AFL-CIO Endorses HR.676Delegates to the Massachusetts AFL-CIO's annual COPE convention in Andover voted on September 18, 2008 to endorse HR.676. John Horgan, IBEW Local 2222 steward at Verizon, had made a presentation on HR.676 to the state COPE Committee, which voted to endorse HR.676. The COPE Committee’s endorsement was approved by the State Federation’s Executive Board and passed unanimously by the convention upon a motion by Robert Haynes, State Federation President. Horgan had earlier been responsible for several endorsements of HR.676 by a number of Massachusetts Central Labor Councils.

How to help Mass-Care!Now is the time that Single Payer reform has a chance to succeed in Massachusetts. It is becoming clear to economists, legislators, businesses, and the general public that the private health insurance system with its rising health care costs is not sustainable. MA has elected a more progressive legislature, and the leadership may change. Now is the time for Mass-Care and its thousands of volunteers to put pressure on the legislature to pass a Single Payer healthcare system and contribute the financial support necessary to succeed! We can do this!Fundraising results have slumped in the past year due to the economic downturn. We need to raise $25,000 before December 31 to be able to continue with our ambitious plans and pay our terrific Executive Director Ben Day. Please be as generous as possible! We are fortunate to have matching funds for the first $6000 we raise through this newsletter. In addition we are planning fundraising House Parties in many areas of the state and hope you can attend them or host one and bring in new people to broaden our outreach. Thank you for all you do. Health care is a right and supporting Mass-Care and Single Payer reform is the right thing to do!

How about a raffle?I propose that we run a huge donation drawing, selling tickets at $1.00 each or a book of six for $5.00. $50,000 in sales nets us $30,000 profit. Total expenses should be $20,000 or less. The potential is huge! We need five special volunteers: a computer whiz for keeping track of revenue and expenses, a treasurer (a separate bank account should be set up for this fund raiser), a clerical organizer, someone with good political connections and a lawyer we could consult.

Once we hear back from interested volunteers, we then form the Fundraiser Team to execute the plan. If we mail out five books to each supporter, say, we could then expect to receive $25.00 back from each person (either from their own pocket, or from the sale of their five books). If 2000 of the 2500 supporters send us $25.00, we would receive $50,000. Interested? Please join in. Call Jim Herbert at 781-729-1104 or wjamesherbert@comcast.net. Thanks! Jim