While health reform may not be at the top of their agenda, some of the Occupy Boston protesters down at Dewey Square had no problem linking the high cost of medical care to their complaints about Wall Street. Some support Obama’s reforms; others called for a single payer system. But, nearly everyone interviewed had universal health care on his or her list of demands.
Even MIT professor Noam Chomsky said the health care system is tainted by what he described as a government dominated by private corporations. Speaking on Saturday night, he told the crowd that the federal budget deficit could be eliminated if the US had a health care system like other countries in the developed world — presumably single payer.
Medicare itself is not the problem, he said.
“It’s a problem because it goes through the privatized, unregulated system,” he said. “It is totally dysfunctional. You can’t talk about this in Washington because of the power of the financial institutions. ”
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Boston Health News 