Single-payer health care just needs vote,Dr. Shelley Berkowitz, Gazette, April 5, 2025
I appreciate Gazette reporter Emilee Klein’s March 30 article for shining a light on the health care crisis for municipalities in Massachusetts [“‘Budget buster:’ Spiking health insurance costs burdening local municipal budgets”]. Despite the myriad current horrors in the U.S. due to President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, this is one horror that does not need to continue, and does have an actionable solution without resorting to forcing individuals or municipalities to make untenable and inequitable choices such as negotiating with unions to opt out of health care insurance — a “Sophie’s Choice.”
The U.S. is just about the only developed country in the world that does not have a public, national single- payer health care system. It is also the only country in the world where medical bankruptcies actually exist. In the U.S., we pay the highest cost per person for health care, with much worse health outcomes than in countries that spend far less.
The reason is simple: It’s because our corporate health care system exists with the primary goal of earning profit for insurance companies, rather than providing actual health care. Health care insurance companies siphon off almost onethird of our health care dollars with their bloated administration costs and profit — money that could be instead available for actual health care. The good news is that, at least in Massachusetts, there is a solution!
There is a bill in the Massachusetts Legislature (that does not have to rely on the feds) which if passed has the practical and financial infrastructure to finally provide comprehensive health care to all Massachusetts residents regardless of employment status, with no copays, deductibles or “cost sharing,” no “preexisting conditions,” and no “prior authorizations.” It is funded by a payroll tax (which costs less than the premiums and other fees paid currently to the private companies).
It would include all prescribed medications, eye care, dental care, skilled nursing facility and hospice care, and allow each person to choose any Massachusetts medical provider without limiting “networks.” It would eliminate the terrible primary care shortage in Massachusetts (particularly western Massachusetts), which is caused by physician burnout due to the timeconsuming and unethical administrative requirements placed on physicians by these insurance companies to delay and limit needed medical care to maximize their profits. It would not affect the VA health care system.
I am a primary care physician who has experienced this firsthand. All other current legislative health care bills, even those purporting to help the primary care crisis, are corporate endorsed and supported bills that are merely Band-Aids to try and prop up a dying and unsustainablesystem. The reason the Massachusetts Medicare 4all bill (SD.2341/HD.1228) has failed to pass for many years in our Legislature is the well- funded lobbying by insurance companies and Big Pharma and their stakeholders (currently, Massachusetts Medical Association administration advocates only for private, mainly managed care “solutions” that are not representative of the views of their individual member physicians who support a single-payer system in Massachusetts).
In our 2024 Massachusetts election, Ballot Question 6, a nonbinding referendum question to gauge support for the single-payer bill in Massachusetts, passed in each of the 11 state districts where it was on the ballot, including districts where Donlad Trump won — documenting that support for single-payer in Massachusetts is a bipartisan issue.
The city of Northampton alone would save $7 million each year on employee health care, money that could then be available for other sorely needed essential services.
Health care is a human right, and one we don’t need to go bankrupt over to achieve. The majority of our local legislators are cosponsors and supporters of this bill; Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa is the lead House co-sponsor. The time has come. We can no longer afford not to! Please urge your representative or state senator to sign on as a co-sponsor, if he or she has not already, and thank them if they already are a co-sponsor.
Dr. Shelly Berkowitz is a (mostly retired) family physician who lives in Northampton, ran a solo family practice for many years, and currently works at the VA in Leeds. She is a member of masscare.org.
