Prospects for Single Payer Health Care with Rep. John Scibak and Deborah Levenson

Single Payer Health Care is social insurance that makes
health care a human right, through a publicly financed
system that provides comprehensive benefits and a
single standard of care, a system where health care
decisions are made by patients and their caregivers, not
by corporate and government bureaucrats, and a system
where scarce health care resources are not squandered
by profiteers, marketing, and excessive administrative
costs, and in fact the cost per person is lowered.
Mass. Second Hampshire Rep. John Scibak and
Deborah Levenson, co-convener of Western Mass.
Medicare for All, will help us answer the question: What
are the prospects for winning Single Payer in
Massachusetts?
Massachusetts Single Payer advocates have been
organizing for a quarter century. Along with long-time
supporters like Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, the
Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care
(“Mass-Care”), chapters of the national Physicians for a
National Health Program and the League of Women
Voters, the Mass. Nurses Association, the Mass.
Teachers Association, and the state AFL-CIO, new grassroots and statewide organizing has emerged, including
the Single Payer Strategy Forum, Right to Health Massachusetts, the Right Care Alliance, and here in Western
Mass., Western Mass. Medicare for All.
In Congress there are HR676, The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, and S1804, The Medicare for
All Act, but, while growing in support, they are going nowhere. So, several states are looking to set up their own
Single Payer plans. In Massachusetts, Rep. Denise Garlick and Sen. James Eldridge have introduced similar
legislation, House Bill 2987 and Senate Bill 619. What are their prospects?