[Platform] letter to editor re GRP position on Massachusetts Health Care plan

[Nat Fortune]

Here is a copy of the letter to the editor Jill and I just sent to  
the (Greenfield) Recorder about the collapsing Massachusetts Health  
Insurance Plan, which just announced 12% increases, plus increases in  
co-pays and deductibles

Nat Fortune

  [250 words]

To the Editors:

Given the recent brouhaha over Senator Barack Obama's unattributed  
use of a speech by Governor Patrick, we were surprised to hear the  
Green-Rainbow party's criticism of the Massachusetts Health Insurance  
Plan being lifted by the Governor himself!

In our June 4th, 2006 op-ed in the Recorder, we wrote that the  
Massachusetts mandate to buy private health insurance was "like  
declaring an end to homelessness by requiring everyone to rent an  
apartment without heat and hot water." Two years later, Governor  
Patrick has come to the same conclusion, declaring that without cost  
controls, requiring everyone to buy health insurance makes no more  
sense than trying to "cure homelessness by ordering everybody to buy  
a house."

We admit it. The Governor is a better wordsmith. But in his change of  
words, he also pointed out another truth: in two short years,  health  
insurance that used to cost about the same as an unfurnished  
apartment now costs as much as a predatory mortgage!

We now ask the Governor to steal the rest of our proposal.  Adopt the  
only proven solution to our health-insurance problems:  the privately  
provided, publicly financed health-care system known as single payer.  
This system is already in place in countries from Germany to Japan.  
We deserve no less.

One party now controls the Massachusetts House, Senate, and the  
Governorship. We are living in a Democratic nirvana. So why do we  
still not have single-payer health care? And by the way, why haven't  
we cured homelessness?

Nat Fortune, Whately, and co-chair, Green-Rainbow Party
Dr. Jill Stein, Lexington