MassCare

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We continue our series on health care with a special guest: Kimberley Connors, executive director of the Single Payer Campaign of Massachusetts, or MassCare. We discuss the history of advocacy for single-payer health care in Massachusetts, other models around the world, and why it's so urgent to adopt single-payer health care in Massachusetts now.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know that the state of Massachusetts could represent the needs of all 7 million of the people that live here and we all can make that happen together. So today we are continuing our conversation about healthcare.

We have a wonderful guest, Kimberley Connors from MassCare and we are going to be talking about a little bit about the history of the push for Medicare for all here in Massachusetts. She will talk about the bills specifically and what's in them. We will talk about generally like why you should be pushing for one state and us specifically to pass Medicare for all.

We'll be talking about hospitals from a variety of perspectives and how they play into this whole process of getting this passed or not or not allowing it to be passed. We're going to talk about how this is affecting the younger generation, as well as ways that you can get involved. But before we do, I will have my illustrious co hosts introduce themselves and I will start with Jonathan Cohn if you're ready.

Jonathan Cohn. I'll introduce myself. I'm not on camera yet but Jonathan Cohn, he him his, been active on progressive electoral and issue campaigns in Massachusetts for over a decade now.

Fantastic. Jordan Berg Powers. 

Jordan Berg Powers. He him, and I have worked on issues and I've been working in politics for over 30 years and that's 30 years too long to not have Medicare for all. 

Anna Callahan, she her, coming at you from Medford where I am a city councilor and I also have done a lot of work at the local level getting people elected – progressives. And now the moment you've been waiting for. We are going to have our incredible guest Kimberley Connors from MassCare introduce herself. If you can let us know a little bit about who you are and about the mission of MassCare. Great.

Well thank you very much Anna, Jordan and Jonathan for inviting me today. I'm Kimberley Connors. I am the executive director of the Single Payer Campaign of Massachusetts, better known as MassCare.

And we're hoping to get, everyone's going to get a MassCare card in their pocket and get rid of all of those insurance cars you currently have. We, we are, You know, I come out of academia.

I was working in an archaeological museum at Harvard and I became ill with breast cancer. And I found out through treatment that the only thing that was important was my insurance. I had Cadillac insurance.

They still expected me to pay more. So much it would have bankrupted me. But I also saw other people in the room. Afraid not, To leave their jobs for even one hour to get treatment that were taking buses from across town. I know how lucky and privileged I am and it just changed my mind about everything.

I left archaeology and I became a real advocate for single payer. I believe it's the only way we're ever going to change this system and MassCare, its mission is to do just that.

To get a law enacted with it is called the Medicare for all law in this legislative session. And it would establish a Massachusetts health care trust that would be the only payer of medical bills in Massachusetts. It would, It would stop insurance companies. There would no be no more insurance companies. It would have, It would be run with a payroll tax or a self employment tax very similar to paid family medical leave is now with their trust. 

And it would be very comprehensive. This is we really believe and we believe for the last 30 years because we too Jordan have been fighting for this for 30 years since they changed the law that allowed profit driven medicine to take over the state because that's where we are now.

This was a law that they enacted and we are seeing. We are reaping the horrors of it and that we are determined to talk about a solution instead of the piecemeal one by one little legislative tweaks that have been done including at the 11th hour of the last session. Yep.

And on that note we'd love to hear just a brief history of you know you talk about being around for 30 years like what has happened in terms of Massachusetts and kind of the history of this push for single payer in Massachusetts. 

Thank you. When it was first proposed 30 years ago, the first time it was filed. I think we're on our 13th filing. That would be 26 sessions that we've been in. 26 years then 26 years ago was our first filing.

There was a. There was right when Canada went single pair. And this was a huge movement not only in Massachusetts but I believe in other states too.

But not as coordinated as it is now. Like with health care now and some of the other organizations that are are working to get everyone Medicare for all. And that is why our bill is based on the Canadian system.

We believe it works. It was original, it had each and so originally it was written as the. In Canada as provinces it still is.

That is how their health care system works. Each province has its own medical trust. And we wrote our bill the same way.

And there have been times we thought it might get out of committee but we've never made it out of committee. We have not. It is as we have gone through different people at the. At the helm of Mass Care and different people at the helm of filing the bill. As a matter of fact, we have changed the bill. And unfortunately, Massachusetts has become a place where profit driven medicine is now considered the norm.

There are very few community hospitals left. This was something we predicted 30 years ago, and here we are now. 

I just want to ask a little bit about that because I know that Massachusetts, in terms of entrepreneurship, has, you know, a lot of investment in biotech and pharmacy and all that.

And I'm curious, like, how that plays in to, you know, I'm sure they also donate to our politicians. So. So I'm curious if you see that at all playing into what has happened historically to this bill across time here in Massachusetts.

I haven't really done that side of it, but I have done the insurance company side of it. And there's no question that the insurance companies are always donating and saying, what about our employees? That is a pushback that we've heard a lot. Our bill wants to retrain people working in healthcare right now.

Why should there be 480 billers? Mass General, Brigham. Why 480 billers when, as Medicare, there's maybe six? It makes no sense at all that this is the. That this is what we're listening to.

And it is, you know, pharmaceutical companies would be reined in. There is no question about that under our bill. 

Yeah, I mean, would it be nice that the legislature had any concern when it just basically did nothing and totally destroyed every single taxicab driver's income in Massachusetts by allowing illegal taxicabs to just take place even though they had very studiously arrested and beaten black and brown people for penny cabs and so forth.

No concern for the loss of jobs for taxicab drivers when Uber illegally starts operating. No concern for. For the fact that there's been one of the longest. There was one of the longest fights for unions around our hotel industry because it's been hit hard by the totally illegal Airbnb process of having illegal hotels, unsanctioned illegal hotels in which people are losing their jobs and people are getting stretched. No oversight or worry about those. Again, people that they look down on and their job losses.

People. You know, it's so interesting the way in which our legislature has absolute, like we have to coddle an industry that serves literally no purpose except to take money from us and, and give it to themselves like it does. It does literally nothing that we. That it adds nothing to our process. There's nothing. It is an absolute Parasitical process in our current system.

And they're concerned about their jobs. Like. Right.

Like, where is. Where is this concern? Like, these are psych or psych jobs. Yeah.

It's like FIRE, right? Finance, insurance, real estate. These are the. The sort of rentier industries that don't actually create real, you know, usefulness to society.

So I would say even. Even like a fire insurance or something. Like, it's. It's maybe collectivizing like these. Like, they're literally. Like, we already have a process.

They're literally providing nothing for these people. Right, right, right. Yes.

You thought. Kimberly, if I can tag in one thing that I would love for you to, like, an. Kind of bone on for people that, like, one thing that you'd probably hear from certain legislators rather than say everyday people, is that Massachusetts already has, like, we are almost at 100% of people insured in this state.

Right. And so what is even, like, why. Why would we need to do this? We've already accomplished that goal.

Oh, my God. Before you answer that question, I have to answer that question because I just can't stand this. It drives me crazy.

With my family, we're incredibly lucky. Like, we're healthy. Like, everything is good.

But, you know, the three of us, we spend probably $15,000 a year on insurance because we. It's not covered through any of our various jobs that we have. And so we spend $15,000 out of our pockets, and then we each have a $3,600 deductible, and so we spend another five, $6,000 every year, and we're, It's like $20,000 that we light on fire. We literally get nothing for it. Nothing. We never hit the deductible. So it just drives me insane. And yes, we're insured.

Wow. Lucky us. Sorry, Kimberly, I didn't mean to jump on you, but please, we need to have these conversations.

And yes, of course, you're lucky to have the connector, but look at how expensive it is. How high are your deductibles? Jonathan, to answer your question, we are currently at 98.4%. It is the insured rate.

This has nothing to do about accessible, quality health care or whether or not it's being delivered equally amongst all of the people who carry health care. They do so because we have. If you file your taxes, you don't have health care.

We're one of the only states that bangs you for it. It's one of the reasons we have such a high rate. It is.

One has nothing to do with the other. We Would like to have 100% insured rate with quality health care, with accessible health care with an acknowledgement that not all parts of our citizenry have equal access. Now going into this because our, our system now has extremely high deductibles.

People are paranoid to use their health care. Our current system is no guarantee of accessibility and we are in the middle of a primary care crisis because they are feel like they're nothing but cogs for these profit driven hospitals or insurance agencies. Yeah, I laugh when I hear that now, Jonathan.

I literally just like the woman sitting next to me in the chemo chair who was going to pay over $8,000 out of pocket as a coinsurance. Yeah, well, we would love to hear from you for cancer. I just want to sit on that for a second.

What a barbaric country would make somebody pay $8,000 to not die from cancer. What a barbaric thing that we just have normalized. It's a real testament to the power of just evil narratives that you could just allow that that just happens and we just like oh yeah, $8,000 to be alive.

We could fix you, we could easily care for you. We, we know how to do it. We could extend your life with all of the best research, but you gotta pay for it. I mean that's barbaric. 

It would be different if we were like the first country proposing single paper. But like every other country has this, this is like we're 50 years behind the times.

Like it's, it's outrageous that you know, we continue to say this ridiculous stuff about the same thing is with, you know, pharmaceuticals, there's people paying $8,000 a month for, for life saving drugs, you know, I mean, and what do they do when they can't pay it? It's like insane. Really. Insane.

Yeah. And it's down. It's just like when we look down on. So we, we do this thing in our media, our sort of culture. We look back at our past, our, our past histories and we look, we look, we sort of think this idea that like you like oh, you have to pay me before I'll fix you. Like we, we, we think of that as like oh, like we've enlightenment happened, we've passed past, but here we are like no better than sort of like an apothecary telling us that like oh, give us a.

Like it's just, it's just bizarre how we, how we have allowed our, how we have allowed this country to retrograde back to a time where we like, like before we think of like paper and like, just like, that's like we are just retrograding into the wrong direction. And for what? To make some people rich. 

That's, that's why.  Yeah, I'm going to move us along. We got a lot to talk about today. I would love to hear from you about the bills that you put forward and the difference between the bills this session and the bills that you've had in the past.

Thank you. Yes, we filed bills in both the Senate and the House. The docket numbers are currently HD1228 and SD 2341.

We'll get bills numbers whenever they decide that they're, you know, once the mini appointments are done. Our bills would establish the medical healthcare trust in Massachusetts and as I said at the top, it would be the single payer. Our bill has evolved through the years and our, and our rewrite for this session includes language to directly deal with what happened with the Steward health care fiasco and current health crisis we have in central Massachusetts, in Dorchester, in Quincy, on the south shore and of course western Massachusetts, which was the first hospital desert in Massachusetts.

We would not allow any for profit hospitals going forward. All hospitals in Massachusetts would have to be nonprofit and they would have to adopt a global budget just like your fire department does. They would have to live in the budget and they could not upload to get more money.

So I always like it when people explain terminology. When you say that they have to adopt a global budget, what does that mean? So that, so that means just like the fire department says, we are going to do this, we're going to pay all these people this much money. We are going to have so much money that we have to spend for electricity, for upgrading our trucks, for disaster fees.

We might have a little reserve for that. And we have to live within the budget. In Massachusetts, we've never made one health care facility live within its budget.

In fact, our benchmark has never been not only met, it has been blown away. Our health care spending benchmark, every time we put one out gets blown away. And there are no repercussions to that for either the nonprofit, the for profit hospitals because nonprofit hospitals are still profit driven.

I want to stop on that hospitals thing for a little minute. I know, you know, there's a lot to be discussed about hospitals and how much, you know, they are driving up prices. And so the hospital's closing in Massachusetts and everything else.

And I know that Jordan wanted to talk on this and there's some good discussion there. Your initial, Kimberly, your initial thoughts about the hospitals that are closing And Governor Healy and I know you wanted to talk about that. I did.

Thank you, Anna. I appreciate that. MassCare has been at the forefront of fighting all of the hospital closures in Massachusetts.

And every time I stand up at a DPA chair and it's like, oh yeah, it's me again, the redhead. Do you remember me? And we have just gone through seven hospitals changing hands. One was taken by eminent domain, which was an idea that we floated in a white paper back last summer spring.

And the governor allowing two hospitals to actually close. One the largest black and brown and English as a second language borough of Boston, to use a New York term, which I'm not a New Yorker, but I think it describes it Dorchester. It's big enough to be its own city.

Dorchester doesn't have a hospital right now and it took over St. Elizabeth's the only quote unquote profitable hospital by eminent domain, allowing in Neshoba Valley and air serving 17 central mass communities, including one of the largest veterans populations in Massachusetts to close. That was the other one.

And I was so taken aback that last week Governor Healy decided to put out a budget that would close not one but two mental health facilities owned by the Department of Public Health. The Pappas facility in Canton, which is for very specialized hair for residents who, some of them are wheelchair bound, some of them have multiple problems. And it's a wonderful facility.

It's an MNA, so it's a union for the, it's Seius in there, MNAs in there and these students, they're all under 22. She's proposed to close the facility instead of upgrading the facility and send them to Weston, Massachusetts, to Westfield from Canton. The other one that she's proposing that is closed is what I know is the South Shore Mental Health Clinic.

It has a pompous heart. It has another name too. It's in Fall River, I believe.

And this one, they're going to lower the caseworkers down to like 24 from 76. And they with the idea of eventually closing the facility. We are in the middle of a mental health crisis and Governor Healy is proposing that we do.

What Steward did is abandoned the patients and the healthcare community professionals to the wind. Yeah. And I just want to say, so this is something that Governor Patrick also did.

He closed the Westboro Hospital. My father in law worked there. And what happened is nothing.

They just ended up on the street and in the jails. Like that's like, it's not, it's not a mystery. There's no like, oh, they have A plan to fix this or as you said, this is a decreasing.

The other thing that happens is people who. With there's fewer. When there's fewer and fewer beds, there's actually just fewer beds.

So people have to, you know, there's already a six month waiting list for a lot of beds for mental health, for people in mental health crises. You know, if you, even if you have good health care, there's fewer and fewer places and the places that they are putting people are worse and worse. So they're more for profit, they're more exploitative, they have less oversight because the government's no longer overseeing it.

You know, Westboro had low incidences of problems. Now there's huge incidents of problems that have been privatized because the corporations want money, they don't want to give care. And so this is the problem with these systems is they continue to, you know, as you continue to privatize.

But the other piece to this that I think it's important for folks thinking about this sort of nationally and thinking about this in Massachusetts that we've discussed on this podcast is just that like the, the ways in which the hospital systems and their consolidation both are causing the increases of cost and also are the impediments to us getting single payer. So if you want to know why we don't have single payer in Massachusetts, we tend to think of hospitals Massachusetts, we think like Boston's children's. Right.

We think Boston centric. But the, but the majority of hospitals outside of Boston are all for profit entities that are, that are explicitly bad. They are trying to make money and they are hurting patients.

And let's just be clear, they're killing people and harming people because they're looking for money. Because there's a, there's a, if you, if you are looking to do something the cheapest way possible, that means that it's coming off of your care. You're paying them money and they're finding the least expensive way to keep you alive to do the right.

So this like, so just be really explicit about it. So these hospitals are doing that across the country. They're certainly doing it in Massachusetts.

And they are looking and they are. And you get, you get Bay State, which basically owns these, a lot of Western Mass. Representatives because of all the jobs, they'll say, oh, we can't, you can't have single payer because we're, we're a corporation.

This is how we make money. And they will threaten those legislators you get here in Worcester, right. We have A terrible corporation.

I like to joke that Tenet, our hospital that owns. That owns a hospital that the Catholic church sold but didn't have forces to change its name. So it's the saint for the poor.

It currently has every year of its existence broken the law. Tenet corporation has had. Has broken.

It's a. I like to say it's a crime syndicate masquerading as a corporation every year of its existence, including fake beds. You know what, you know what you call somebody who creates fake beds and then charges somebody for a criminal? They're like, that's, that's like, you know, they're the mob, but they have like, but they're on Wall street, so it's okay, right? Like, it's just bonkers town.

So these are the people who are then going to these. They're telling legislators, yeah, you're just one of 160. I'm more powerful than you.

I have more say than you. And you get these things. You steward.

Right. All of these large hospital systems are both forcing the cost up because they're taking more and more of the care inside their walls. So you have like, I think when there was a fight between Harvard Pilgrim and the.

And the Reliant, I think Tenet out here. It's like 40% of people in Massachusetts were harmed by the possibility of that loss. Right.

So you have these hospital systems just like getting bigger and bigger and bigger, forcing prices up, up and up. And that also harms our ability to move forward legislation because legislators are then scared about the size and scope of these massive things. And so you need a whole state government to force these large corporations to bring down costs, to be back in line, and to prioritize our health over their profits.

And what's worse is that some of these nonprofit hospitals, as the nurses association did some great research on, they're also functioning like for profits. They're offshoring billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars. They're using their names as trademarks in foreign countries and then earning them as profits for their people.

Right. Like, these are non. These quote unquote nonprofits, like Childrens, all these things.

They are, they are, they operate like for profit hospital systems, and they're getting bigger, they're getting conglomerate, and they're acting accordingly. Which. And, and the problem is that you can always trot out good people, good research, because there's obviously no one goes in, no one goes through the horrors of medical school unless you're incredibly dedicated to making people's lives better.

It's also a completely broken system. So you have amazing people in these broken systems and they get trotted out to silence the fact that we actually need some controls on all of these things. But I just, you cannot understand the problems of not getting single payer without understanding the control, power and size of these, of these corporations that are running our systems.

And I think that's such a cool point that you noted Jordan in terms of the way that even when some of these cases are nominally not for profit, it doesn't mean that they operate in the way that we similar like we like to attribute. Not like nonprofit entities operating as where just because somebody isn't getting like just because there aren't shareholder dividends coming out of it doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of money going all the way up to the top. And a system that operates to, to cut corners, cut costs and reduce services.

Especially when you think about like for, and those who are for profit hospitals, it's like the money is coming from like it just always raises the question of where the money from profit is coming from. Absolutely. Well, where is the money coming from? I'm going to jump in right here and say that our money for running this show comes from you, the listener.

And we, you know, none of us get paid anything but we, we do have some lovely young people who do some work in the back end. Video editing, social media, you know, graphic design, all that kind of stuff. And if you can donate a little bit of time of your hard earned dollars to us and to their ability to make sure this show gets into as many ears as possible, that would be wonderful.

There's a link below and, and now we're just gonna close out. We gotta got one more little discussion topic and then we're gonna let you all know exactly how you can get involved. But before we do, I would love to just touch on how this is affecting young people.

You know, I know that there have been a lot of, I, I think there has been a lot of movement in terms of the American public and their feelings about the insurance industry. As we noted in the, you know, the, the shooting of the healthcare CEO and the reaction to that, especially from, from young folks. And I'd love to hear from you Kimberly about where you see that happening here in Massachusetts.

Thank you Anna. It is, it is in survey after survey, the number one fear of gen z-ers is getting sick. When I was a kid, when I was in my 20s, I could go to the doctor, I could talk to them, we could spend time trying to figure out what was going on.

They don't have that. They have a system that is so rigged against them that that high deductible plan that they have because of the high insured rate we have in Massachusetts is going to have them maybe paying $600 for that 20 minutes that they might get with their primary care because they haven't signed up for their annual physicals yet. It is not just in Massachusetts, it's across the country, but here in particular, we have data on it.

And kids call me all the time, what do I do when I get off, when I'm off campus and over 26, what do I do? And I don't have an answer for them yet, but I hope to. I hope to. It's a very sad thing that that is how they're growing up.

Yep. I mean, it's tough to be young today with student debt and the housing crisis and the medical bill. I mean, like, things are bad.

And. And lastly, we would love for you to let our listeners know how they can jump on board, how they can get involved with mass care. What's your, you know, strategy in terms of, like, local stuff and statewide stuff, and just go ahead and let folks know ways that they can get involved.

Thank you. I appreciate that. First of all, before I do, it's the Pocasset Mental Health facility and it's between Bourne and North Falmouth that they had.

Maura Haley has proposed clothing. I misspoke. That's a different one.

That has a different problem. The one that I mentioned. We are, we filed our bill.

We have grassroots activating activist hubs across the state. We are, you know, we are planning a lot of day. We meet virtually and we are planning a lobby day.

I can't. I haven't got a confirmed date. But look for a very late March, very early April date.

And we would love to have people there. We've got some surprises planned for this time around. And we're going to be in the grand staircase.

We are. Why isn't anyone talking about health care? That is, if I could have a podcast, that would be the name. We also have local initiatives with.

Right now we're working with the city of Pittsburgh, where they are one of the ones very impacted by the closure of Nashoba and the maternity ward at Lebinston, which Jordan was talking about. The less beds, less beds. Where do these people go? And so there are resolutions that can be done by either town or city councils or select boards.

We also have people bringing it up to town meetings. So we're talking about it on all levels because municipally town budgets would not be in the trouble they are in if they didn't have to pay for health care. This is a contractual agreement that they have.

If they, if there was no more contracts about health care, we could actually talk about real wages for the first time in 30 years. And as I said, lobby day. We also are planning a Medicare for all conference to be held in Worcester probably June 21st at Clark is what it's looking at at Clark University.

Stay tuned. More to come on that and our website is MassCare and feel free to reach out to me at any time. Wonderful.

Before we go, I'm just going to give my regular folks a moment to say any last final thoughts. I know we, we had briefly mentioned this idea of talking about like, oh, Massachusetts can't do it alone. And I'll start off with that one and just say like hey, you know the way that it happened in, in some other countries, I believe Canada is one of those, is a state passed it first.

So there is absolutely no reason in the world why we cannot pass it here in Massachusetts. Our state is big enough. We could, we could definitely do this as a single state and not, you know, have to rely on other states.

It also, there are other states of New York and in other places where it might happen first. But wherever it happens first is a, an amazing win for America because if it happens in one state then I believe it will be dominoes to other states and then it happening nationally. And that's my final word.

And I want to say, yeah, I would, I want to agree with that completely and just say I actually think it's better if it happens locally. Like that's a better way to do it. Do you know how hard it's going to be to get Alabama into a single payer system? Like you know, we'd have to.

It's like there's lots of places that are just going to be really difficult. But you know what we can do here? We can pioneer it, we can refine it, we can, it will have mistakes but it'll cost a lot less and be a lot better. We already have some of the best doctors, some of the best minds that we can put to it.

So like let's do it in a smaller place where it's easier to really get it right and pioneer it for the rest of the country. We have an economy that's as large as plenty of countries that have single payer. There are countries that have that, that have fewer people and fewer money, less dollars less things than we do that are able to provide health care for their citizens.

We certainly have enough here to provide single payer. We have a large enough economy. We have the right people to do it.

And actually this is the right size, this is the right amount of people to start to think about how we can make this system work. And I honestly believe that the only problem with doing single payer here is we'll then have to tackle housing because everyone will want to move here. Yeah.

Because it'll be so much better to live here. It's already better to live here than most places. But it would be even better to live here because we will have pioneered something that people are asking for.

Absolutely. Jonathan, to Jordan's point about comparing us to other countries that we have a similar GDP to Sweden and they've managed to have a far better healthcare system than we do with this with like a similar total pool of money that at the end of the day I always hate when politicians talk about money not being there for things because we are such an affluent state that we should, we do have the resources to provide for people. Provide people as well as the case with something like a single parents typically displaced.

Like we already, people already pay insurance premiums so it's already like we're already paying private taxes to insurance companies. The same thing. And then final comment is that it's like this has been in the state Democratic Party platform for a long time and it would just be nice for the state Democratic Party elected officials to finally care about the platform that says that they support things.

Like to actually like care about that and maybe support the things. Yep, 100%. Wonderful.

Well Kimberly Connors, thank you so much. Thanks to all our listeners. Please forward the show to anyone you know and join MassCare.

And we look forward to seeing you all next week.