MassInsider

Press Release: 2/13/2025

For Immediate Release

Contact: Kimberley Connors, Executive Director, Mass-Care, 617-297-8011, director@masscare.org

Next week, Mass-Care: the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care will deliver a petition to Gov. Maura Healey with over 1000 signatures from around the state demanding that Carney Hospital, Nashoba Valley Medical Center and Norwood Hospital be reopened. Mass-Care has issued the following statement in conjunction with that action.

Broken Hearts over Broken Health Care

Since the closing of Carney Hospital, Nashoba Valley Medical Center, and Norwood Hospital, we now have vast health care deserts in parts of Massachusetts. Instead of sweets for Valentine’s Day, the people who have worked, paid taxes and live in these communities receive inequitable health access and higher costs. We all receive broken-hearts of longer wait times, longer drives, fewer Primary Care physicians and more profit driven health care.

Next week, Mass-Care will deliver a petition to Gov. Maura Healey with over 1000 signatures from around the state demanding that Carney Hospital, Nashoba Valley Medical Center and Norwood Hospital be reopened. Now that would be sweet! The only way to stop the implosion of Massachusetts health care is to realize the “marketplace” health care model is a failure. This is breaking the hearts of patients, the budgets of municipalities and households, and the trust in the once great Massachusetts medical care system.

There is an alternative. Mass-Care has introduced legislation to create a single-payer health care insurance system in Massachusetts.

The bills, HD 1228 and SD2341, entitled An Act Establishing Medicare for All in Massachusetts, would establish the Massachusetts Health Care Trust, which would serve as the single payer for health care costs to Massachusetts residents. This would replace the role of insurance companies and certain government programs.

The trustees for the trust would be appointed by the governor, attorney general and Governor’s Council from across the state. They would have the ability to address the hospitals crisis.

There would be no deductibles and co-pays under Medicare for All and all medically necessary treatments would be covered. People could go to any doctor of their choice. The savings under such a stream-lined and comprehensive system is estimated at 30% of current spending. See https://masscare.org/economic-analysis/.

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Mass-Care’s mission is to establish a single payer health care system in Massachusetts so that all residents of the Commonwealth will have access to comprehensive, quality, and equitable health care, publicly financed and free of out-of-pocket cost at point-of-care, because it is basic to life and human dignity. The Mass-Care Coalition is now over 100 organizations.