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

[Larry Ely]

Wonderfully lucid and pungent, Nat and Jill.  This piece ought to wake up 
some of the many, many sleep walkers inside and outside of municipal and 
state government.  Never discount how far ripples ripple.
Larry


At 09:34 AM 3/21/08, Nat Fortune wrote:

>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
>
>
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