Trying To “Bridge the Gap”: Fighting For Health Care For All
Richard Gilluly
06/23/2004
Walkers Cross the Longfellow Bridge for Health Care
Many hundreds of people representing groups as diverse as the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the Harvard Medical School, labor unions, members of the Boston City Council and the Massachusetts Senior Action Council rallied in Boston Saturday to protest the fact 82 million Americans lacked health insurance at some point during the past two years — and that some 43 million permanently lack it.
“The figure includes about 600,000 uninsured people in Massachusetts, and millions more of us are struggling to keep the coverage we have,” said Jon Weissman of Springfield, who coordinated Western Massachusetts participation in the rally on behalf of a group called Jobs with Justice.
The Purpose of the rally was not just to protest the present system but also to advocate elimination of the vast and costly array of 1,100 health insurance companies, health maintenance organizations and other private groups involved in the health care payment system and replace them with a single-payer system operated by state or federal governments, speakers said.
Letter Carriers Walk for Health CareReputable economists quoted in such publications as the Journal of the American Medical Association and The New England Journal of Medicine believe savings from a single-payer system would more than generate enough revenue to provide health insurance for all Americans, speakers said.
Western Massachusetts, including Franklin County and West County, was well-represented on a blessedly cool, cloudy late Saturday morning as the colorful group of demonstrators, waving banners and placards, marched a mile and a half from Kendall Square in Cambridge across the Longfellow Bridge to the Boston Common — where many more already had gathered.
“Bridging the Gap” was the theme of the rally, which meant that for millions of Americans the lack of health-care insurance is a great gap that stands between them and the health care they, and especially their children, desperately need, said speakers. Similar marches were held all over the nation, including one across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in which Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), presumptive Democrat nominee for the presidency, was scheduled to march.
“Health Care is a right, we’re ready to fight” was one of many chants heard from the marchers, but while that may have had a ring reminiscent of earlier, more unkempt demonstrations, this was a very serious demonstration, indeed, with a very large middle-class component.
Among the speakers at the Boston Commons, for example, was self-employed physical therapist Nancy Bullett of North Adams, who told the crowd that not only are her patients increasingly hard-pressed, and often unable, to pay for the treatment they need but that she and her two children lack coverage themselves, because premiums of over $800 a month are too high for her to pay.
Her children, she said, are on a waiting list for a state program, the Children’s Medical Security Plan (CSMP), and there are 14,900 kids on that waiting list statewide. While the Legislature last week passed a bill which would immediately fully fund CSMP, Ms. Bullett said she is not placing any bets yet.. “It did pass,” she said, “but now it has to go to Governor Romney.” Whether he will sign it was unknown at press time.
A USA Today story handed out at the demonstration reported that one in three Americans younger than 65 were uninsured for a time during 2002 and 2003, according to a study commissioned by Families USA. Half were uninsured for at least nine months and two-thirds for at least six months, the story said.
And while most Americans over 65 have some health insurance through Medicare, that, too, is threatened, declared speakers, including Isaac BenEzra of Amherst, president of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, who said many thousands of people in the US die annually because of the “collateral damage” inflicted by runaway prescription drug prices charged by “monopolistic” pharmaceutical companies, and because they lack health insurance.
And Ms. Bullett told West County News that the recently-passed Medicare “reform” bill, which has drawn strong opposition from health activists, would cut payments for rehabilitation of seniors, including physical therapy and speech therapy for stroke victims. The mechanism for the cuts would be a new Medicare rule limiting combined payments for both kinds of therapy to $1,500 a year. Currently, there is no limit. “It’s so bizarre,” she said, “None of us can afford to get sick.”
Stressed again and again were two other factors, first that America’s failure to provide needed health care to people on a timely basis ultimately costs far more, because treatment is offered only in overcrowded emergency rooms after an emergency medical crisis already is occurring.
Second, as Harold Cox, member of the Cambridge health Board and president of the Massachusetts Public Health Association, pointed out, preventive medicine is neglected under our current system, because uninsured people do not receive screening for a variety of diseases, including breast cancer and prostate cancer. Besides, he said, people with contagious diseases, such as AIDS, do not receive the treatment and education they need to prevent the contagion from spreading. “Our health care system is sick,” Mr. Cox said bluntly.
Union members, including John Hogan of Local 2222 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, told of the fact that employer-union contract disputes these days almost always occur over health insurance benefits that formerly were routinely paid by employers but often are no longer. Contract disputes over health insurance began to occur frequently in the late 1980s, he said, “but the situation is much worse now.”
Speakers also pointed out that a single-payer system is not, as detractors claim, “socialism,” because while government would operate the health-care payment system under single-payer, most doctors, hospitals and other providers would remain independent entities, as they are now. A bill currently wending its way through the Massachusetts Legislature contemplates such a system for Massachusetts.
Western Massachusetts marchers numbered 60 and included students, seniors, and in-between, with members of the following organizations struggling with the health care system:
Alliance for Injured Workers
Arise for Social Justice
Franklin/Hampshire Health Care Coalition
International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 404
Mass. Senior Action Council
National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 46
Odyssey Bookshop
Service Employees International Union Local 2020
Social Workers for Peace and Justice
United Auto Workers Local 2322
article posted on www.pvaflcio.org
Pioneer Valley, Massachusetts, AFL-CIO
