Our state – this Commonwealth – is founded upon one of the great themes of religious faith – the responsibility to care for each other and for those less fortunate. The very meaning of the term “commonwealth” reflects a concern and caring for the public good – a covenant among members of the community for the welfare of the least among us.
In his noteworthy sermon aboard the Arbella entitled, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” our first Governor – John Winthrop – admonished the first citizens of the Province of Massachusetts Bay with a clear statement of our civic responsibility as a reflection of our actions as people of faith. No document better exemplifies the spirit behind the Puritan migration to the New World, effectively summarizing the goals of these first American Puritans.
Winthrop said that “to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God,… we must be knit together in this work [of building a new society] as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of others’ necessities, we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality, we must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.”
A Modell of Christian Charity, 1630
In his sermon, Governor Winthrop laid out the fundamental principles of a community and of a commonwealth, explaining that others in succeeding generations would judge us by how well we made others’ conditions our own, and they will point to Massachusetts as an example of either success or failure in that regard. In an analogy loved by both President John F. Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan, Winthrop proclaimed: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”
One hundred and fifty years after Winthrop’s sermon, in drafting the preamble of the Constitution for the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams did not sit down and invent a covenant out of the depths of his mind. He built upon Winthrop’s concept of a covenant of community with these words:
“The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good. It is the duty of the people, therefore, in framing a constitution of government, to provide for an equitable mode of making laws, as well as for an impartial interpretation, and a faithful execution of them; that every man may, at all times, find his security in them.
“We, therefore, the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the great Legislator of the universe, in affording us, in the course of His providence, an opportunity, deliberately and peaceably, without fraud, violence or surprise, of entering into an original, explicit, and solemn compact with each other; and of forming a new constitution of civil government, for ourselves and posterity;…”
Preamble to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780.
In these two founding documents – Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” sermon, and Adams’ Massachusetts constitution, we are called to make the wants and needs of our fellow citizens our shared responsibility as Winthrop noted; and we are bound together by a solemn social compact for the common good on which Adams based our foundation as a Massachusetts commonwealth. We are, in essence, called to help all in our society through the caring of a supportive community. Furthermore, it should come as no great surprise that Massachusetts and its citizens have played a prominent role in the history of America, in the expansion of human liberty, human rights, civil rights, women’s rights and the alleviation of human suffering?
As President John F. Kennedy, addressing the Massachusetts Legislature in 1961 prior to his inauguration, said of Massachusetts: “Its leaders have shaped our destiny long before the great republic was born. Its principles have guided our footsteps in times of crisis as well as in times of calm. Its democratic institutions–have served as beacon lights for other nations as well as our sister states.”
One of those more recent beacon lights, in my opinion is our Commonwealth’s historic leadership in health care. In our time, the landmark Massachusetts Health Reform Law, enacted in 2006, establishes a framework to make health insurance accessible and affordable to every resident of the Commonwealth. Indeed, Massachusetts has already crossed a threshold that has eluded presidents, governors, and other political leaders in the United States for generations by becoming the first state to require and provide universal health care coverage.
There is growing anecdotal evidence that our health reform program is improving the lives of many of our fellow citizens and, in some cases, is even saving some lives. At the second anniversary of the passage of the health reform law, Reverend Hurmon Hamilton, a leader of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, told a story of a woman who came to him complaining about a chronic sore throat and the lack of money to see a doctor for treatment. He told her about the new health insurance program and helped her to sign up. When she went to a doctor about her sore throat, she learned that it was actually the early stages of throat cancer, for which she was later successfully treated. She said that “the new health insurance program saved her life.” We’ve heard similar stories among the 370,000 Massachusetts residents who now have health care who, only a year ago, were among the uninsured.
Every state is watching the ongoing efforts in Massachusetts to make this health reform program succeed. Will we have the will to continue? If we do, will we, as Winthrop wrote, “be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of others’ necessities?” In other words, are we willing to sacrifice our time and treasure to make health reform work so that everyone has access to care?
We understand, of course, that if health care is to be accessible to all, it must also be affordable to all. Furthermore, it must be of a quality and safety that makes it a goal worth the sacrifice, and there must be easy access to primary care providers.
Last month, the Massachusetts Senate endorsed a second phase of health reform in the form of a comprehensive Quality Improvement and Cost Containment bill, sponsored by Senate President Therese Murray and many of our Senate colleagues, which will, if passed by the House of Representatives and signed by Governor Patrick, go a long way to helping all of our Massachusetts residents find affordable, high quality health care.
Our plan is to:
· Improve Access to Primary Care Services;
· Enhance Transparency of Health Care Costs and Quality;
· Encourage the Modernization of the Health Care Delivery System;
· Promote the Efficient Use of Health Care Resources; and
· Empower Patients and their Families in Health Care Decision-making.
Our journey to ensure that everyone has access to safe, high quality, affordable health care is an evolving story, a work in progress. As we, sometimes, stumble in our personal lives, we will certainly stumble in the effort to offer health care to all. However, we will continue to pick ourselves up and keep working toward our ultimate goal.
Senator Richard T. Moore
Senate chair of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing
Preamble “We,therefore,the people of Massachusetts,acknowleging with grateful hearts,the goodness of the great legislator”
The way I and others have been treated by our Senators and Reps and the Governor would surely make our forefathers dissappointed!I have to remind all of you that we the people have been treated with indiffernce,rudeness and sometimes downright meaness.This is a bully state and we the people need to change that.
You folks have a way of cutting and pasting enrollment figures willy-nilly. One minute it’s 320,000, then 340,000 and you, Mr. Moore, just won the prize at 360,000.
Face it. This freak show is failing and on the short road to being finished. The truth about this harmful and wasteful law is getting out nationally, and, soon, the entire country will know about the MA fraud disguised as health care reform.
For real health CARE reform, check out HR676.
By the way, S2526 does nothing to help residents with affordability or the shortage of doctors. The premiums were unaffordable for many back in 2007 and are increasing on July 1, 2008 which will exacerbate the problem and cause more disenrollment.
Doubling the copays for residents 300% and below FPL was really clever – this discourages use of the insurance, thus, saving the state much-needed money. And are Commonwealth Care members supposed to wait around for care until nurse practitioners are enticed to MA?
When was the last time you lived up to the oath you took to represent the people, not the special interests that sock money into your bank account, campaign coffers and pay for your luxury trips?
To “reporter”: Good question about legislators’ commitment, or lack thereof, to their oath of office; anyone who has been paying attention to Mr Moore’s actions knows that he CONSISTENTLY places the medical-industrial insurance complex and their financial interests first and ordinary people and taxpayers’ needs are a distant distant second. (See excerpt from legal article below that underscores the blatant betrayal of their oath of office to uphold the constitution, in respect to the citizens health care amendment)
Where are the stories of the over 300,000 who remain totally uninsured??? Where are the stories of those who are being fined under the mandate law b/c they could not obtain state permission to remain uninsured (those were not “granted a waiver”)??? Where are the stories of those individuals, families and employers being crushed, some bankrupted, by the obscenely high cost of insurance and healthcare while this “not-for-profit” MA industry posts billions in profits???
The Joint Committee on Health Care Financing has shown itself to be very willing to build on the insurance industry’s treatment of healthcare as a product rather than as a public good and human right. Is this immoral? Is this why now all the talk of religion, and of stumbling?
And ironic (and insulting) that Mr Moore speaks here of the preamble to the state constitution. It is that very document, the state constitution, that grants citizens the legal right to undertake a process to amend the constitution if deemed necessary by The People. We the People initiated a constitutional amendment process to secure “Comprehensive, affordable, and equitably financed health insurance for all state residents”.
In a brazen move, 102 of the total 200 state legislators chose to break the law on January 2, 2207, when they denied The People their constitutional rights and denied the amendment its second constitutionally required joint legislative vote up or down on its merits. The state Supreme Judicial Court issued its opinion in March 2008 that the law had been broken by the legislature. (Detailed facts at http://healthcareformass.org/).
———-
See below article excerpt providing the legal background r/t the illegality of NOT VOTING ON THE MA CITIZENS HEALTH CARE AMENDMENT (btw this travesty of justice was totally ignored by the legal community and ALL major media outlets).
By EDWARD LAZARUS, Jan. 04, 2007
“…Since 1918, the Massachusetts Constitution has provided for amendment by ballot initiative. The process is straightforward: To get an initiative on the ballot, proponents have to obtain a designated number of signatures from qualified voters – specifically, more than 3% of the number of voters in the immediately-preceding gubernatorial election.
Once these signatures are obtained and certified, the proposed initiative moves to the legislature or “General Court.” Under the state Constitution, this body must hold a vote on the merits of the proposed initiative. If more than one-quarter of the legislators (a total of about 50 members) votes in favor, then the initiative is placed on the ballot for a popular vote.
Following this procedure, [proponents of an effort to establish "comprehensive, affordable, and equitably financed" health care as a constitutionally protected right, drafted language to create the citizens health care amendment and then collected the requisite number of signatures (in this case, more than 70,000) to move the proposal to the legislature.]
The Democrat-controlled legislature, however, refused to bring the ballot measure to [its second] vote on the merits.
The effect of this parliamentary maneuver was to stymie the initiative. Under the state Constitution, the proposed amendment can’t go on the ballot without the approval of one-quarter of the legislature. And without a vote on the merits, this prerequisite could not be met.
The Supreme Judicial Court’s Unanimous Opinion: The Attempt to Block the Measure Violated the State Constitution
…sponsors of the amendment… cried foul and went to court seeking a judicial order requiring the legislature to follow the constitutional requirement of a vote on the merits.
And last week the Supreme Judicial Court…issued its ruling.
In a unanimous opinion, the Justices excoriated the legislators for disobeying the clear command of the state Constitution — which, they affirmed, unequivocally requires that a vote be taken on all ballot initiatives that have received the requisite number of supporting signatures. The main purpose of the constitutional provision creating the initiative procedure, the Justices observed, is to provide an avenue for the people themselves to move forward on policy initiatives, without the possibility of being thwarted by a simple majority vote of the legislature.
In light of the language and purpose of the constitutionally-authorized initiative procedure, the Justices bluntly admonished the legislators that, if they should adjourn without taking a vote on the merits, they would be in violation of the oath they each had taken to uphold the state Constitution. After all, refusing to take the required vote (and thus forestalling a popular vote) would accomplish the very evil that the initiative process was created nearly 90 years ago to cure.
All that said, the Justices also ruled that the Supreme Judicial Court itself had no power to issue an order forcing the legislature to take a vote. Neither any statute nor the Constitution authorized such an intrusive remedy. And basic notions of the separation of powers prohibited a court, on its own authority, to order a vote. Accordingly, the Justices could do little more than exhort the legislators to look to their consciences, and remind the legislators that they themselves might be held accountable at election time for flouting the law…
A former federal prosecutor, Edward Lazarus is the author of two books — most recently, Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court.
Lazarus article link http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20070104.html
TOO BAD THIS ARTICLE FOCUSES SOLELY ON THE GAY MARRIAGE BAN ATTEMPT WHICH THE LEGISLATORS DID FINALLY VOTE ON, LARGELY DUE TO MEDIA AND PUBLIC ATTENTION. THESE VERY SAME LEGISLATORS DENIED THE REQUIRED VOTE ON THE HEALTH CARE AMENDMENT AND THEY GOT AWAY WITH IT. THE MEDIA IGNORED THE HEALTH CARER AMENDMENT FROM DAY ONE. (THEY KNOW WHO BUTTERS THEIR BREAD). THE PUBLIC’S EFFORTS TO CALL ATTENTION TO THIS TRAVESTY WERE THOROUGHLY IGNORED.
see http://www.healthcareformass.org for details.
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