Downtown Northampton over Main Street. STAFF FILE PHOTO
By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL
Staff Writer
NORTHAMPTON — Count the city among those advocating for universal health care in the state of Massachusetts.
The City Council last Thursday passed a resolution to endorse a bill in the state Legislature titled “An Act Establishing Medicare for All,” which if passed would “guarantee every resident of the Commonwealth access to high quality health care,” by providing reimbursement for all health care services offered by eligible providers and supplying funding for health care facilities, according to language in the bill.
The bill’s sponsors in the Legislature include both state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa and state Sen. Jo Comerford, both of whom represent Northampton in their respective chambers.
In calling for universal health care, the Northampton resolution cited factors such as the shortage of primary medical care physicians in western Massachusetts, the rising costs of health insurance coverage and the recent collapse of the Stewart Health Care in the commonwealth.
“An alternative system that provides quality, affordable health care for all would remedy the unfairness, unevenness, and disparity of the current healthcare system and advance the goals of increasing access, improving quality and containing costs,” the resolution states. “Medicare for All, or single-payer health care, is a system that would guarantee inpatient and outpatient medical, dental, vision, and nursing home care for all Massachusetts residents regardless of income, employment status, or preexisting conditions, and without copayments, deductibles or cost sharing.”
Shelly Berkowitz, a retired family physician who helped craft the language of the resolution, told the council during its Thursday meeting that if the budget bill promoted by President Donald Trump were to pass in the Republican-controlled Congress, Massachusetts would stand to lose $1.75 billion in Medicaid funding.
“How will the Massachusetts political leadership react?” Berkowitz said. “The only logical solution now is to cover everyone with Medicare for All.”
The council unanimously passed the resolution, which was sponsored by councilors Stanley Moulton, Rachel Maiore, Quaverly Rothenberg and Jeremy Dubs.
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Moulton said he supported the resolution due to the ongoing instability at the federal level under Trump, which has seen numerous job cuts and slashing of health care funding.
“The federal political climate now makes this more imperative than ever,” Moulton said. “It [the resolution] speaks for itself.”
Maiore also said that if enacted, universal health care would have a positive impact on the city, citing rising health insurance costs for employees that have contributed to the demands to the school budget.
According to MassCare, an advocacy group that supports single-payer health care in the state, the city of Northampton in 2023 paid a total of $11 million in health insurance costs to employees on its payroll, and would stand to save $6 million in total costs under a single-payer system.
“If this actually happened, our school budget woes would probably go away,” Maiore said. “It’s that much money that we are spending on our health care here.”
Though a bill exists to create universal health care in Massachusetts, it has been introduced in every legislative session in the State House for more than a decade and has yet to be passed.
A similar bill, known as Primary Care for You or PC4You, would require all commercial insurance payers in the commonwealth to offer a prospective, per patient, per month payment to all primary care practices who chose to opt in. That bill would also mean patients would not be responsible for co-payments, co-insurance, or any deductibles when accessing primary care. Though that bill did not go through last year, the state created a Primary Care Task Force to work on the details on how such a future bill might work in practice.
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.
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