June 2025 Healthcare update
This month, the Health Care Committee continued to pursue our project to learn about students' knowledge and attitudes about health care alternatives in the U.S.
We did some informal "tabling" at the Blue Wall food court in the UMass Campus Center. That is, instead of us being installed at a table, we visited tables with groups of students and asked if we could speak with them about health care. After a brief description of Massachusetts' and other states' initiatives to establish single-payer plans within a few individual states before doing it at the national level, we emphasized the importance of understanding younger voters' concerns and needs and asked them if they would agree to sign up with us to participate in a focus group on the topic. (We gave out LWV Healthy People/Healthy Democracy bookmarks and also offered pizza.)
We were pleasantly surprised at the students' level of interest and cooperation. (The rest of us in the committee were in awe of member Anna Carter's ability to get over twenty students agreeing to share their thoughts in this way in a little over an hour -- about four times more than the rest of us together.) We also reminded the students that they would need to think about getting their own health insurance and health care when they turn 26, if not before.
With help from the Western Mass Health Equity Network at UMass, we reserved a room upstairs in the Campus Center for the following week, and held our first hybrid session, zooming Amherst student member Maika Thanner in and recording it at the same time. It was not hard to elicit questions from the students -- why is health care so expensive, how does the U.S. health care system compare to those in other countries, why is it to everyone's advantage if people with health care help provide it for those who can't afford it, just to name a few. We questioned them about their use of social media and how they might use it to share advocacy messages with their fellow students and friends.
We're still analyzing what we learned but are eager to engage in more small group discussions on the topic with students over the summer. To join us or give us comments and suggestions, please contact the Chair, Barbara Pearson. To join us at a Mass-Care Annual Conference June 21 at Clark University in Worcester, sign up at https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/mass-care-30th-anniversary-strategy-and-working-conference.
Please contact Barbara Pearson for more information.