Last night, along with Representative Michael Brady and local healthcare workers and advocates, I was pleased to kick-start the ‘Campaign for Better Care’ at the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center at a forum organized by Health Care for All Massachusetts.
 
For years throughout the Commonwealth and across the country, all of us know that we’ve had to wage a constant fight against a number of health insurance companies and the special interests in hopes of truly achieving a goal that is so important to us, our friends and all of our family members—patient-centered healthcare.
 
At the forum, I briefly discussed our work together to make the goals a reality and touched on the work that still lies ahead. Please find some of my remarks below, and feel free to weigh-in with your own thoughts and feedback by e-mailing me at: Rep.ChristineCanavan@hou.state.ma.us.
 
 
“As many of you know, I am up for re-election this year and, like my own re-election campaign, this campaign is an exciting campaign, and I’m here tonight to add my voice to it and bring a unique perspective to this discussion.
 
It’s the perspective of not only serving as the State Representative for the Greater-Brockton area; but also as a Registered Nurse with a practical knowledge of our healthcare delivery system and a strong understanding of the challenges it faces.
 
And I’m sure many of you understand these same challenges, too. You, too, are frustrated with them, like I am, and it’s why we are here tonight to continue the work and continue to make the progress…right here in Massachusetts, and right here in Brockton…that we’ve already been so successful at over the past four years.
 
As a nurse-legislator, I have been proud to fight for access to comprehensive healthcare and improved healthcare delivery laws year-in and year-out because I know that it’s been a fight that’s personal to my family and all of yours. Healthcare matters. People matter.
 
But, before we begin talking about where we want to go—or the next fight, if you will—let’s take a moment to step back and talk about what we’ve already accomplished over the past four years.
 
With the Neighborhood Health Center and three hospitals right here in Brockton, all of us here know that healthcare is important. It’s obviously important for our health, but it also matters for our economy, for access to good jobs and an improved quality of life.
 
Since we worked together in 2006 to pass meaningful Health Care Reform here in Massachusetts, we have succeeded in reflecting these priorities and making progress in the things that matter.
 
We have succeeded at ensuring that 97.3% of people here in the Commonwealth have health insurance coverage, including the 406,000 people who have become newly-covered since its implementation.
 
Sobering statistics, nonetheless, because I’m sure each of us here knows a face attached to this number—a young mother and father working three-to-four jobs trying to pay their bills and raise a family, a middle-aged woman needing medical attention who isn’t yet covered by Medicare, or a young child who used to go to bed at night suffering before being covered with the insurance that healthcare reform provided them with.
 
That, my friends, is progress, and that’s what all of us here have accomplished.
 
But, we have a ways to go.
 
Working with our partners and our friends at Health Care for All over the past few years, the legislature has continued to look at ways to improve on that progress and those policies.
 
Just last month we passed legislation, for example, that helps offer greater assistance to small businesses in providing health insurance to their employees through group purchasing collaboratives.
 
We put language in the books that establishes a Rate Review Process through the Division of Insurance that promotes transparency and aims to keep health insurance premiums in-check.
 
We’ve established commissions to further look at changes in rate reform, and set up a reserve fund to help provide bonds to Community Hospitals for expansion and renovation projects—all with access to quality patient care first in our mind and foremost in our priorities.
 
Going forward into the next few months as we prepare for the next legislative session we’re already beginning to pick up where we left off—and we’re going to need your help to keep patients and people first in this fight.
 
We need to keep fighting for payment reform to keep the premiums down for our working families; so that they will no longer have to choose between having comprehensive health insurance or paying the penalty on tax returns because they can’t afford it.
 
We need to continue working to reform the Affordability Schedule into one that reflects all out-of-pocket costs into the equation, including co-pays, deductibles and a host of other expenses.
 
And, perhaps most of all, we need to ensure that there are adequate processes in place to hold insurance companies accountable and responsible to our families and the residents of the Commonwealth.
 
I can already tell that this will be a vibrant and productive discussion.
 
Tonight, and in the months and years to come, please know that you can count on me to be a strong advocate in the legislature for the critical components included in this ‘Campaign for Better Care’ because it is a campaign about working families—and it is one that truly Puts People First.”