By Daphne C. Thompson
The Harvard Crimson, Oct. 27, 2014
Holding signs reading “Healthcare not warfare” and “Insurers deny, people die,” more than 100 activists rallied at Boston Common Sunday to promote a single-payer healthcare system and an emergency global health fund.
The participantsâincluding a Harvard contingent of around a dozen students and affiliatesâmarched the perimeter of the Common before arriving at the Parkman Bandstand, where they listened to several speakers describe the scale and severity of the global health crisis, in part due to the inequity of treatment.
Donald M. Berwick â68, a health care policy lecturer at the Medical School who unsuccesfully ran for his party’s nomination in the ongoing Massachusetts gubernatorial race, compared the magnitude of the health care campaign to the feminist and civil rights movements.
âA fight for a rational, humane, universal, sensible health care system which makes health care a human rightânot just here, but anywhereâis a fight of that dimension,â he said. âWe need to engage it.â
The Boston Rally for the Right to Health was one of many similar events taking place in 63 countries this weekend as part of the Article 25 âGlobal Day of Actionâ campaign, named for the section in the United Nationâs Universal Declaration of Human Rights that declares health as an inalienable right.
The activists gathered signatures to petition gubernatorial candidates Martha Coakley and Charles D. Baker â79 to support a state-run, single-payer healthcare system in Massachusetts. A single-payer system would provide all citizens with comprehensive health care under a single, publicly-financed insurance plan.
âAs cynical as it is, a lot of times it takes generational change for these kinds of ideas to become more ingrained,â said Frances Ding â17, a member of Harvard Partners in Health, who attended the rally. âMore and more people are looking to other countries and thinking, âwhy are they significantly happier with their health insurance?â while we still canât ensure health insurance for millions of Americans.â
Brook K. Baker, a law professor at Northeastern University who spoke at the rally, said that single-payer health care represents a more cost-efficient and equitable alternative to the current market-run system. Citing discriminatory insurance policies and pharmaceutical interests as tantamount to health rationing, he urged the protesters to pressure their representatives to invest in universal care.
On a global scale, the protesters advocated for a $20 billion Global Health Emergency Fund to combat epidemics like Ebola and strengthen medical systems in every nation.
âIf those countries had access to healthcare to begin with, we wouldnât be seeing this massive epidemic,â said Joia Mukherjee, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who spoke on the Ebola crisis. âThere is not healthcare anywhere until thereâs healthcare everywhere.â
Daphne C. Thompson is a contributing writer.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/10/27/boston-activists-rally-healthcare/