To the Editor:

The Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care (Mass-Care) agrees with the Reporter’s May 9 editorial entitled “Slow-motion Steward collapse no accident.” We think it’s no accident because our health has been left to the chaos and vultures of the marketplace. 

Health care is a human right, not a commodity. Only a fundamental redirecting of priorities and policy can create a just health care system and meet the needs of our communities.

An Act Establishing Medicare for All in Massachusetts (S.744 and H.1239) would establish the Massachusetts Health Care Trust, a single payer of all health care costs in the Commonwealth. The Act eliminates profit and waste in health care, expands coverage for all residents for all medically necessary care, and saves the Commonwealth 30 percent of current spending.

A single payer system, instead of a marketplace, would have funded hospitals equitably. The Trust would explicitly have the power of “funding capital investments for adequate health care facilities and resources statewide.”

Readers can go to masscare.org to learn if their legislators cosponsor the legislation.

Unfortunately, House Speaker Ron Mariano (D-Quincy) and the Legislature’s “leadership” continue to push the false solution of a “free-market” health care system with some amount of “regulation,” weak and ineffectual “fixes” that leave monopolistic corporations in control.

And so, on March 27, the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, led by Rep. John Lawn (D-Watertown) and Sen. Cindy Friedman (D-Arlington), sent the Massachusetts Medicare for All bills to “study” – the polite way of letting bills die at the end of session.

However, legislators can still bring the Massachusetts Medicare for All bills back from “study” and have an open and democratic debate on them.

Right now, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has the power to immediately ensure the continued operation of the hospitals that Steward Health Care has put in danger. Under Chapter 17, Section 2A, if the governor declares a health care emergency (as was done because of Covid), the Public Health commissioner “with the approval of the public health council, may establish procedures to be followed during such emergency to [e]nsure the continuation of essential public health services and the enforcement of the same.”

The Commonwealth could take over the hospitals and appoint people who will run them. Who owns the hospitals can then be sorted out without endangering the public.

The Commonwealth can also exercise its power of eminent domain and take over the hospitals and all their buildings, equipment, patient lists, etc. It could then run them as public hospitals.

The governor and the Legislature must stop dancing around this threat to public health and act immediately. Just hoping other private corporations will show up and take over the hospitals is a recipe for disaster. Bold action is required.

Jon Weissman, chair Mass-Care
Kimberley Connors, executive director, Mass-Care