Judy Atkins: Support Medicare for All 

Lum3n/via Pexels

Published: 02-14-2024 9:00 PM

In the article, “Nursing students meet with Legislators,” (Recorder, Feb. 13) one of the students from the GCC Nursing School class asked the legislators what nurses can do to drum up support for Single Payer Health Care — also know as Medicare for All. Good question!

The legislators responded by encouraging the nurses to join “a dedicated but small group” and support the effort to get Medicare for All passed in Massachusetts and nationally.

Medicare for All would provide all residents of Massachusetts with free access to health care and eliminate the insurance companies. There would be no need for insurance companies, and taxpayers would save millions of dollars.

The Bills are HD 1584 and SD 2182. For more details please look up these bills.

Indeed, there is a dedicated group in Franklin County supporting Medicare for All, But there are now dedicated groups in all of western Massachusetts, and also in Boston, the South Shore, the Cape and other areas. All are members of the statewide coalition, Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care (masscare.org). In fact, one of our most important coalition members is the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

If it were up to the people of Massachusetts, Medicare for All, would be the law of the land by now, the roadblock is the way the Massachusetts Legislature functions. Committees have the power to block bills from ever getting to the floor. The Medicare for All bill is now stuck in the Joint House and Senate Committee on Health Care Financing. It will take more organizing to get the bill to come before the Legislature.

For more information and to lend your voice to health care for all please go to Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care at masscare.org.

Judy Atkins

Greenfield