Ensuring the success of the state’s health reform law is serious business: being without health insurance is unhealthy: for individuals, families, communities, and our state. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to have some laughs along the way. After all, even the most dedicated follower of health reform can’t be sustained by arcane health policy conversation alone.
An opportunity for creativity is fast approaching: the requirement that the Connector give its “seal of approval” to health insurance products that “provide good value to the consumer” and “offer high quality.” The law does not require the Connector to design an actual seal (i.e., an emblem or symbol). But, since a picture is worth a thousand words, and health insurance is very confusing, why not give consumers some visual aides to help navigate the new health reform landscape?
In the spirit of civic engagement, I have come up with a few ideas. I invite you to send in your own.
#5: Finally, a classic seal
Nancy Turnbull, Harvard School of Public Health
Ah, leave it to Nancy to make the health care debate accessible to all of us. You have my Seal of Approval!! S.W.A.K.
Over the years, not only has Nancy Turnbull made us all smarter, but she has also made us laugh. This will be much appreciated over the next four weeks as we enter this challenging phase of health reform.
Nancy, your “seals” boil it all down to the simple, but real, choices we need to make! I can’t imagine what you might NOT have put up there. Your vision has helped many of us struggle for reform and progressive regulation of health insurance over the years. Thank you for joining in on this round!
I think there is sufficient research out in the world to demonstrate that laughter and smiling is healing. For those of us who have had to sit through many meetings, with many more to come, I massively appreciate the healing energy that Nancy has shared with us. Thank you Nancy for being a role model: a very smart, very caring, very knowledgeable expert… who remembers to laugh!
Another ‘Seal’ suggestion from the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization; the Rev. Hurmon Hamilton, Roxbury Presbyterian Church and Rabbi Jonah Pesner, Union for Reform Judaism
“First, Do Good” is preferable in this situation.
No slight intended to the Hippocratic Oath or to GBIO, but c’mon, folks, we can do SO MUCH BETTER than this reform.
Yes, it’s great that tens of thousands people in MA, many of them working people who are living at or near poverty level (~$9,600/year, in itself a disgrace) are now insured thru state coverage under Chap 58, but EVERYONE in the state needs and deserves quality affordable coverage.
With the current $62Bil a year in the MA hc pot (the current level of HC spending in MA) we can absolutely positively afford to do this, to enact real universal healthcare reforms that extend quality affordable coverage to all.
It’s not a matter of economics. It is a matter of moral decency and of the will of our “leadership” politicians to allow legislation that re-distributs some of these hc funds away from corporate profit and wasteful admin and other useless expenditures.
There is enough money in the hc system at present to provide coverage for all; it’s corporate power and corrupted politics that are blocking successful and urgently needed health care reform, in MA and on the national level.
How tragic. Let’s fix this and really do some good.
In the near future the MA state supreme court will be ruling on the citizens health care constitutional amendment legal action that had to be brought before the court. This resulted from 102 members of the MA legislature choosing to break the law on Jan. 2, 2007, rather than granting the second required vote to the hc amendment so it could be placed before voters on the statewide ballot.
The amendment is designed to be a powerful legal and moral tool to guarantee that ordinary people’s health and economic needs take precedence over corporate greed in current and future health system reforms.
You can learn more about this citizen-led effort at http://www.HealthCareForMass.org
A quick explanation of the seal. As GBIO leader, Rev. Ray Hammond so aptly said, “We support the letter and sprit of the law that created the individual mandate. It should be used as a tool to get to get to universal participation, but it should not be used to hurt those who cannot afford insurance. In medical school, each future doctor is taught the crucial precept essential to healing: ‘first, do no harm.’ In implementing this health care reform law, the Commonwealth must make this same pledge: ‘first, do no harm’”
In January 2007, GBIO released a report showing that between 35-50% of our members in different income categories could not afford the mandated insurance, based on conservative estimates of premiums and total out of pocket costs. “Our data has convinced us that the best policy option for the Commonwealth is to relieve people under 500% of the Federal Poverty Line from penalties, at least until we have time to see how many people voluntarily choose to sign up for these new, complicated products.” says Jonah Rabbi Pesner of the Union for Reform Judaism. “If the Connector Board has another solution to this urgent problem, we are open to hearing it. The citizens of Massachusetts will not let them move forward using the mandate as a blunt instrument indiscriminately taxing the economically vulnerable into indebtedness. That’s not what it’s there for.” We must remember the call, “First, do no harm.
The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization is an affiliate of the National Industrial Areas Foundation, and is widely credited with the poplar political mobilization that made Massachusetts health care reform possible.
Rev. Hurmon Hamilton, Roxbury Presbyterian Church
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, Union for Reform Judaism
Rev. and Rabbi, thank you for pointing out that you and your group have been “widely credited”. Thousands of additonal citizend activists have been participating in a Massachusetts “Right to healthcare” reform approach that has been underway since 2003. That year, tens of thousands of voter signatures were collected for a health care constitutional amendment and countless numbers of citizens met with their elected leaders. But of course you must be familiar with this effort because GBIO was repeatedly invited to participate in it. It remains perplexing why you never did.
Supporters of the healthcare amendment include Phil Johnston (one of the original 20 signers who also include me, for disclosure) and many other community leaders fully expected that the amendment would get its 2 required votes by the legislature where it has strong support and then be placed on the 2006 statewide ballot for voter approval or rejection.
Inexplicitly, the “leadership” within the state legislature refused to allow the hc amendment its 2nd due vote on its merits. The State Supreme Court has a case before it asking the court implement a remedy to this travesty of justice.
Readers who would like to learn about the hc amendment and stay informed as the legal action proceeds can find info and sign-up for updates at http://www.HealthCareForMass.org
A final question for Rev. Hamilton and Rabbi Pesner. Was the reform effort you collected signatures for ever placed on the ballot? If not, why not?
I look forward to your reply. I really do. Sincerely and in health, Ann Eldridge Malone, RN, MSN