Massachusetts Legislature: Health Care is a Constitutional Right
Massachusetts has taken a HUGE step toward protecting the health of the citizens of this great Commonwealth as much as it protects automobiles registered here.
This has been one of the great insurance protection hypocrisies of our time: states that require compulsory auto insurance but have no such requirement for the basic human need for health insurance--they leave it to the private sector to protect its citizens' health. We all know how well THAT works given that 44 million Americans lack health insurance and 8 out of 10 of those 44 million people come from WORKING FAMILIES!
The role of government is to fill in the gaps that the private sector neglects, and health care has become one of those gaps. It's about time government steps in to do what the private sector is incapable of--to ensure adequate health care is a RIGHT, not just a priviledge.
Hopefully, more states will follow Massachusetts' lead. Here is a reprint of the story from the Boston Globe and boston.com:
Legislature Approves Health Care Coverage as a Constitutional Right
By Jennifer Peter, Associated Press, 7/14/2004 14:25
BOSTON (AP) Comprehensive and affordable health care coverage would become a constitutionally protected right for all Massachusetts citizens under an amendment overwhelming approved Wednesday by the House and Senate.
If approved by lawmakers again during the 2005-2006 session, the question would go before voters in November 2006. If successful, the state would then develop a specific plan for providing and paying for health care, which would again go before voters, in November 2008 at the earliest.
"We're trying to provide justice in health care so that every single citizen has a health care plan," said Sen. Steven Tolman, D-Boston. "It is the citizens of Massachusetts that we are all looking out for here."
Because the amendment was initiated by a citizens' petition, it required support from only 51 of the 200 state representatives and senators as part of the constitutional convention. The vote, however, was overwhelming with lawmakers supporting the right to health care 143-41.
The amendment states that "it shall be the obligation and duty of the Legislature and executive officials...to enact and implement such laws as will ensure that no Massachusetts resident lack comprehensive, affordable and equitably financed health insurance coverage for all medically necessary preventive, acute and chronic health care and mental health care services, prescription drugs and devices."
Following the vote, Senate President Robert Travaglini, D-Boston, adjourned the constitutional convention that began earlier this year with the much-debated approval of a ban on gay marriage that would simultaneously legalize civil unions if approved again by the Legislature during the next two-year legislative session and by voters in the fall of 2006.
The adjournment effectively killed amendments that would have led to the election of judges an initiative fueled by a high court decision that legalized gay marriage and made it more difficult for citizens to put policy questions on the ballot.
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