Dear Editor,
Last Thursday, Dec. 3, a group of Tufts students testified at the State House and made this legislator and Tufts alum very proud.
Tufts students involved with the Student Health Organizing Coalition (SHOC) provided compelling testimony in support of legislation to reform student health insurance. I want to express my sincere gratitude to the students involved with the SHOC. As a member of the Joint Committee on Health Care Finance, I was incredibly impressed by their testimony, and I know my legislative colleagues were as well.
Massachusetts has a proud history of ensuring that all students have access to health insurance, and our institutions of higher learning were the first in having universal health care. Nevertheless, as members of the SHOC testified, student health insurance doesn't always meet the needs of those it is meant to protect. In fact, in some cases the limited coverage creates problems where some students are forced to choose between their education and their health care needs (see Ellen Kan's Nov. 24 article, "Students push for Tufts health insurance reform," in the Tufts Daily).
It is my hope that legislation pending on Beacon Hill will correct this problem, and it is through the work of Tufts students that this problem was brought to light and will be fixed.
Sincerely,
Carl Sciortino, LA '00
State Representative, Medford & Somerville
