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NAVIGATION PNHP RESOURCES
Posted on February 23, 2009

State Health Reform: A Massachusetts Case Study

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Date and Time: 02/25/2009 2:00pm - 4:00pm (EST)
Where: 2226 Rayburn House Office Building.

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

Join us to consider lessons from state-based health reform and their relevance to current national reform policy proposals. Panelists will represent health centers, HMOs, insurance brokers, physicians, nurses and patients. Witnesses will include Arthur MacEwan, PhD, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Boston; Robert Gaw, President, NASRO, Health Benefits Administrator; Mary Ford, former Mayor of Northampton, MA; Human Services Manager, David Himmelstein, MD; Sandy Eaton, RN, Massachusetts Nurses Association; Jamie Eldridge, State Senator.

Under the Chapter 58 legislation in Massachusetts, law currently mandates the purchase of private health insurance for all individuals not eligible for a public option. Those who are uninsured in Massachusetts are subject to fines. The lack of primary care physicians in addition to the high deductibles have not created universal access to care in the state.

In the most recent election, local ballot initiatives supporting single payer and opposing individual mandates passed by landslide margins in all ten legislative districts of Massachusetts where they appeared. With almost all precincts tallied, roughly 73 percent of 181,000 voters in the ten districts voted YES to the following: “Should the representative from this district be instructed to support legislation creating a cost-effective single payer health insurance system that is available to all residents, and oppose laws penalizing those who fail to obtain health insurance?”