Every US resident should have access to affordable, quality health care, including birth control and the privacy to make reproductive choices.  

Healthcare Committee 

Healthcare Committee
Chair Barbara Pearson

League Position on Healthcare
Logo for the League of Women Voters Healthcare Reform Toolkit. Healthy People, Healthy Democracy.

Join the Health Care Committee and help combat the ongoing crisis in health care. The U.S. system suffers from spiraling prices, last place rankings in health outcomes, and deep inequalities across races, regions, and genders, yet significant reform is blocked, even in progressive Massachusetts. We have many approaches to choose from. The local committee contributes to education and advocacy activities at the state and regional level in conjunction with allied groups. We also participate in the LWVUS Health Care Reform Interest Group, a loose network of health care advocates from 30+ states. The network provides a broader perspective on issues and solutions in the varying circumstances where Leagues are located.

Latest Updates

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Health Care update - August/September

The Health Care Committee (HCC) has yet to get underway for fall 2025--but we're eager to hear from LWVA members.  We are ALWAYS looking for new members.  Join US.  We have plenty of initiatives that need to start up again--or if you have a Health Care story that needs some action taken, come share it and let's see what we can team up on for it.

Meanwhile, the HCC is working on a project from last year with the LWV national Health Care Reform Interest Group: concurring with a new addition to the LWVUS Privatization position (in good part to pursue DE-privatizing or maintain the public status of a health care unit).  Our goals are explained in the 2021 book, the Privatization of Everything.

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2024/2025 Health Care Committee Report
2024/2025 Health Care Committee Report

The LWVA Health Care Committee continued its work to fulfill the LWVUS health care position, educating and advocating for a publicly financed health care system--to improve health outcomes, reduce costs, and re-introduce democratic governance in health care with coordinated resource allocation and public oversight. 

However, as clarified in an impactful report from the research arm of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), "Our Payments, Their Profits," the corporate Fortune 500 medical industry is deeply entrenched, siphons off as much as a third of our health resources to investors, and effectively thwarts reform efforts. (See also, the Privatization of Everything by Cohen and Mikaelian.) The results of the 2024 November election dealt an even larger blow to the movement to de-privatize health care. The new administration lost no time adopting Heritage Foundation Project 2025 policies that prioritize handing our health care taxes over to investment firms (like United Health, Aetna, Cigna, etc.)

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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.)

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