Ad­vo­cates press for uni­ver­sal pri­mary care

If state leg­is­la­tors needed a cheer­ing sec­tion for en­act­ing uni­ver­sal pri­mary health care, they got one Tues­day night.

Dur­ing a pub­lic hear­ing jointly hosted by the House Health Care and Sen­ate Health and Wel­fare com­mit­tees, more than 50 peo­ple ex­pressed sup­port for a pub­licly funded health plan that would pro­vide pri­mary care for all.

The fi­nanc­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tive de­tails of such a plan have yet to be worked out. But law­mak­ers said the sto­ries they heard dur­ing two and a half hours of tes­ti­mony re­in­forced the need for a more ac­ces­si­ble pri­mary care sys­tem.