E-Mail This Article to a Friend TO OUR HEALTH Rally for coverage BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

When it comes to health care, Nancy Bullet, a self-employed physical therapist from North Adams, has two choices: pay for exorbitantly priced insurance on her own, or go without. A single mother of two, Bullet, 49, had long settled for the first option. She paid up to $1300 per month for what she calls a "lousy" health plan covering catastrophic medical care and featuring a $2500 deductible. This year, when Bullet found a lump on her breast, she discovered just how inadequate her plan really was. It cost her $100 above the $1300 monthly tab to visit a doctor and undergo a mammogram and ultrasound — tests that she needed to ensure the lump was benign.

"It was ridiculous," Bullet says, referring to her former health plan. "For each procedure I had to pay high co-payments. It was too expensive." Now, as of May 1, she has chosen to go with the second option — and live with the fear of sudden illness or injury. "The dread is the phone call saying my kids have gotten hurt," she says. "I live with this anxiety every day."

Bullet is not alone. Currently, as many as 44 million Americans have no health-care coverage at all — and millions more struggle to keep what little they do have. In the Bay State, according to the Massachusetts Hospital Association, 644,000 residents had no health-care benefits for 12 full months in 2003. This, despite the fact that the vast majority of them — 85 percent — worked at least part-time. More than 50 percent of the uninsured in this state hold down full-time jobs. Clearly, the problem has reached crisis proportions.

Which explains why tens of thousands of people — those who have health insurance, and those who don’t; those who fear losing their coverage, and those who have too little — will join together on June 19 for the Bridge the Gap March for Health Care for All. The event aims to draw attention to the numbers of uninsured in the United States, and the urgent need for reform, by marching across bridges in 134 cities around the country — from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, to Iowa City’s Iowa Avenue Bridge, to New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. In Massachusetts, some 3000 participants will traverse the Longfellow Bridge, in Boston, where they will convene for an afternoon rally.

Russ Davis, the director of Jamaica Plain’s Jobs with Justice, which is organizing the local march, explains that the event has attracted an impressive range of people from 70 area organizations, including labor, women’s, immigrants’, veterans’, and seniors’ groups. "It’s a people’s movement," Davis says. "This issue affects literally every segment of society except the extremely rich. People feel like there’s a failure to recognize this as a major crisis" as the Clinton administration did back in the early 1990s.

What’s unique about the Bridge the Gap march is its spotlight on average people who have suffered from the lack of comprehensive health insurance. On the march’s national Web site (www.bridgethegapforhealthcare.org), more than 2100 people have posted their personal health-care-horror stories. And their message is clear: they’re fed up with the escalating cost of coverage, and they want change. As Kim Chung, of Newton, said in a posting: "I’m marching to bridge the gap on health care because I was diagnosed with cancer four years ago. I had to work during my treatment to keep my insurance coverage. Every hard-working and tax-paying person deserves universal insurance coverage!"

Organizers hope the march will mark the first step in a movement for fundamental American health-care reform. At the very least, they want politicians to hear the voices of ordinary people struggling to keep their coverage. Says Bullet, who will speak at the Boston rally: "I want people to know this is a problem bigger than the unemployed person on the street. It’s a problem for those of us who work, and who work hard. I want someone to listen."

The Bridge the Gap March for Health Care for All kicks off at Kendall Square, in Cambridge, at 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 19. For more information, contact Jobs with Justice at (617) 524-8778, or visit its Web site at www.massjwj.net.