The people's voice
I ENTER the public debate on healthcare reform with two perspectives. The first is as a Catholic. I was raised, along with my eight brothers and sisters, in Catholic schools in New Orleans and remain connected to the church in leadership roles through to my current position on the parish council at Our Lady of Lourdes in Jamaica Plain, a parish with dozens of members without health insurance. The second is as a businessman. I serve as senior vice president of Century Bank, a Massachusetts-based bank with 400 local employees, most of whom have employer-sponsored health insurance.
Both perspectives lead me to the same conclusions:
It is a moral outrage that 750,000 Massachusetts residents have no health insurance.
It is good business to provide quality, affordable health insurance for employees.
Employers who do provide health insurance should not subsidize the cost of healthcare for those whose employers do not.
Employers with means who choose not to offer insurance should contribute to the cost of public assistance received by their employees.
These principles formed the legislation authored by the religious congregations, business leaders, hospitals, medical professionals, and advocacy groups of the Affordable Care Today! Coalition and the ballot initiative of the MassACT campaign, which has collected more than 85,000 signatures in support of this plan.
House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi adopted these principles for the health reform plan he shepherded through the House. Senate President Robert Travaglini has brought the Senate closer to these principles than ever before. Now it is up to the conference committee and Governor Romney to cement health reform based on these principles into law.
If they obstruct it, gut it, or load it with immoral proposals like slot machine funding, stripped-down insurance products, or penalties for the most vulnerable, then we will take healthcare reform to the 2006 ballot. The people of Massachusetts have a vision for healthcare reform unfettered by political ambitions, personal rivalries, or special interests and are ready to act if our political leaders are unable to do so.
People of all walks of life were saddened and outraged by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal government. I have family members who lost their homes to the flooding, and the loss to our extended family has been incalculable.
At that moment, New Orleans was a city in a basin. We have an opportunity to be the opposite -- to be the City on a Hill.
Through our healthcare reform initiative, we can model what it means for individuals, businesses, and government to partner in mutual responsibility. Let us be a beacon to the rest of the nation so that all might see what it truly means to be a Commonwealth.
Gerald Algere is a board member of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. 
