Latest news with #BayStaters
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
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Should I buy a home or have a baby amid tariffs? MA residents say no, says new poll
Should you choose now to buy a home, have a child or look for a new job? Massachusetts residents say no, according to a new poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center released Friday. The poll found that Massachusetts residents are very pessimistic about the U.S. economy and about making expensive life decisions. Based on the recent poll ,64%, including a majority of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, think it's a bad time to buy a home. Majorities also think it's a bad time to buy a car (54%) or have a child (51%). Few think it's a good time to buy a major household item (17%) or look for a new job (19%). The only action surveyed that Bay Staters are less pessimistic about is investing in the stock market: 27% think it's a good time to do so (with Republicans more likely to say so), 34% say it's a bad time and 39% are neutral. The poll also looked at how Massachusetts's residents feel about their current finances, their expectations for the economy in the coming year and their thoughts on tariffs. The Bay State Poll surveyed 907 Massachusetts residents online between May 22 and May 26. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.3%. Currently, 38% of Massachusetts residents say they are worse off financially than a year ago. 46% say they are about the same, and 16% say they are better off. When looking ahead, 46% say they expect to be worse off a year from now, compared to 27% who expect to be the same or better off. Those who expect to be worse off cite higher prices, increasing inflation, and a government who they expect will handle the economy poorly. More than half (55%) also expect the U.S. economy to experience bad times in the next year, and 68% think tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy. That includes 97% of Democrats, 72% of Independents and 17% of Republicans. 75% of Republicans expect tariffs to have a positive impact on the U.S. economy. This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Should I buy a home right now? New poll shows MA residents say no
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
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Industry pushes back on Senate-backed Rx price cap idea
BOSTON (SHNS) – Less than two weeks after the Senate moved to create a new prescription drug price cap system in Massachusetts, an industry official warned against legislative 'leapfrog' that could complicate the most recent round of reforms. A top pharmaceutical industry lobbyist urged lawmakers to hit the brakes on an attempt to impose upper price limits on certain medications, arguing that the new regulations would come while another cost control law is still being implemented. Both a 23-page amendment added to the Senate's fiscal year 2026 budget and a much broader, 118-page standalone bill (S 868) would allow the Health Policy Commission to impose upper price limits on some prescription drugs to cap what patients, providers and pharmacies pay. Kelly Ryan, deputy vice president for state policy at the influential industry group PhRMA, told legislators Monday the proposal would 'leapfrog substantial legislation enacted here in Massachusetts just this past December,' referring to a new prescription drug price control law. That law limited patient costs to no more than $25 for certain name-brand medications to treat chronic illnesses and eliminated those costs for similar generic options. It also created a new licensure process for pharmacy benefit managers, and stood up an Office for Pharmaceutical Policy and Analysis within the HPC. 'Where the bill before you focuses primarily on manufacturers when we're looking at pricing, the office is tasked with looking at the broader supply chain, providing detailed analysis, reports and policy recommendations,' Ryan told the Health Care Financing Committee at a hearing about the new bill. 'We urge the committee to let that work proceed before taking any next steps.' The Senate has not embraced the industry call to slow down. In late May, before lawmakers heard testimony on the larger bill at a public hearing, the Senate adopted a budget rider that would empower the HPC with the ability to cap certain drug costs and set limits on what Bay Staters pay. Sen. Cindy Friedman, who co-chairs the Health Care Financing Committee and authored both the bill and the amendment, said during budget debate the upper price limit measure builds on the new law with 'one more step in that direction.' 'Pharmaceutical companies should be thrilled to have their drugs go through this because they should have enormous value, right?' she told Ryan during Monday's hearing. 'We're looking for drugs that are very high cost with lots and lots of value. We want to know about that, and we're willing — we believe people should be willing to pay for that. It would seem to me this would work in your favor because, I would hope, your drugs have enormous value.' A handful of other states have pursued similar price caps, prompting legal battles. Ryan said 'not one [state's system] has been implemented to date.' 'States have spent years and millions of dollars, and not a single patient has been impacted,' she said. 'In fact, patients are likely going to be negatively impacted by [upper price limits].' Health care spending in Massachusetts continues to surge well beyond state targets for cost containment, burdening many household budgets and putting care out of reach for some low-income residents. While the Senate budget amendment focuses on prescription drug price caps, Friedman's underlying bill reaches into many other areas of reform, including by giving regulators more flexibility to examine an individual hospital, health system or insurer's spending. The legislation would also boost penalties for failure to comply with cost control plans and give the Division of Insurance new tools to modify premium rate increases, according to a summary produced by advocacy group Health Care for All. 'It is individuals, families and businesses who will ultimately bear the burden of these costs, both through increased premiums and growing out-of-pocket costs. An unacceptable 40% of residents continue to report challenges affording care,' Alex Sheff, senior director of policy and government relations at Health Care for All, said. 'These costs come on top of the growing cost of living, challenges that leave residents with impossible choices between paying rent and getting the health care that they need.' The Health Care Financing Committee is weighing a suite of other bills supporters say would rein in health care costs and promote affordability. Committee co-chair Rep. John Lawn said at the start of Monday's hearing that the panel 'must put more focus on all areas of the drug supply chain' to understand what causes high drug prices. Another proposal before the panel (H 1398 / S 899) would require hospitals receiving state funding to compensate their CEOs at a rate no more than 50 times the amount that the hospital's lowest-paid worker earns. Dr. Taylor Walker, a physician at Cambridge Health Alliance and president of the physician union CIR SEIU, said 44 of 57 health care CEOs in Massachusetts earn more than 50 times the salary of their institution's lowest-paid worker. Rep. John Moran asked Walker if the CEO compensation limit could push health care executives to leave for higher-paying roles elsewhere, such as in the pharmaceutical sector. 'I'd say the problem is actually not losing talent because we don't want to pay CEOs $6 million a year. The problem is that we're losing talent because we don't want to pay our doctors who are actually taking care of our patients, and we don't really give a shit about the people who are taking care of our communities,' Walker said. 'This is something that is absolutely maddening.' WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
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GOP Mass. governor hopeful Brian Shortsleeve touts ‘record' $416K fundraising haul
The race for the 2026 Republican gubernatorial nomination moved into high gear Monday with one aspirant for the corner office announcing he'd 'shattered' a fundraising record. Brian Shortsleeve, who helmed the MBTA under former Gov. Charlie Baker, said his campaign had raised $416,027 in its first 20 days, outpacing both his old boss and his so-far only competition for the nomination. 'I'm deeply grateful that so many Bay Staters have stepped up to support my campaign to bring affordability and fiscal sanity back to Massachusetts,' Shortsleeve, who entered the race last month, said in a statement. The other Republican in the race, Mike Kennealy, who served as Baker's housing and economic development czar, said he'd raised more than $130,000 in the first three weeks of his campaign. That haul prompted a challenge from the state Democratic Party, which complained to state regulators that Kennealy apparently had collected thousands of dollars in donations above the allowable limit. Shortsleeve said his campaign broke the $139,502 record for non-incumbents that Baker set during his first 30 days as a candidate in 2009, when the individual donation limit was $500 instead of the current $1,000. It also exceeds the $405,511 that incumbent Democratic Gov. Maura Healey raised in March 2025, Shortsleeve's campaign said. Healey announced earlier this year that she's seeking a second term. Kennealy's campaign attributed the overages to donors who'd covered credit card processing fees and couples who contributed to the Republican hopeful as a single transaction, MassLive previously reported. A spokesperson told MassLive that the campaign was 'actively' refunding excess donations. And the campaign was in 'full communication' with regulators to ensure compliance. State data show Kennealy with $256,715 in his campaign account as of Monday. Healey had $2.9 million in her campaign account as of Monday, data show. Bill Clinton raises alarm over Donald Trump: 'We've never seen anything like this before' Mass. Gov. Healey's popularity takes a dip in new poll Hampden County June Staff Office Hours for State Senator Paul Mark Springfield officials support legislation to automatically seal criminal records Gov. Healey demands answers after ICE arrests Mass. high school student Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
4 days ago
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Health coverage losses in Mass. may be even steeper
BOSTON (SHNS) – Tens of thousands of Bay Staters could lose subsidized health insurance through the Massachusetts Health Connector and premiums could rise for most other members under a suite of reforms in the U.S. House-approved reconciliation bill that Gov. Maura Healey dubbed 'devastating.' For months, officials and health care activists have been warning about major impacts to MassHealth from the Medicaid changes sought by Republicans in Congress, who want to fund tax cuts and rein in what they describe as wasteful spending. But the sweeping package that cleared the U.S. House last week features many other provisions that could also impact state-run health insurance marketplaces, including limitations on tax credit eligibility for some immigrants and a shorter open enrollment period. Massachusetts Health Connector Executive Director Audrey Morse Gasteier said as many as 100,000 people — roughly a quarter of all who get their health insurance through the marketplace — could lose their coverage. Taken alongside the roughly 150,000 other people who would lose MassHealth eligibility, Morse Gasteier said the House-approved bill would effectively double the number of Bay Staters without health insurance. '[That] is just such a heartbreaking and catastrophic future to contemplate after Massachusetts, for nearly 20 years, has been at the forefront and really all in on making sure everybody in Massachusetts has health coverage,' Morse Gasteier told the News Service. A Connector spokesperson said the most recent U.S. Census data estimates about 2.6% of Massachusetts residents are uninsured. State law requires Massachusetts residents to be insured, or pay a tax penalty. A June 2024 Center for Health Information and Analysis report estimated 1.7% of Massachusetts residents reported being uninsured in 2023, which translates into about 116,594 residents. Nearly 90% of the uninsured were adults aged 19 to 64, four-fifths were male, and two-thirds of the uninsured had a family income below 300% of the federal poverty level. Under the House bill, premiums are also likely to rise for those who remain insured through Connector plans, Morse Gasteier said. She also forecast a major financial impact, saying the policy changes in the bill and the expected end-of-year expiration of tax credits to help reduce premiums would cost residents and the state a combined $750 million per year. The sweeping federal legislation, which also touches on immigration, artificial intelligence and food aid, features numerous eligibility and spending reforms affecting Medicaid programs and health care marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act. Hannah Frigand, senior director of HelpLine and public policies at Health Care for All, described the package as a 'backdoor repeal of ACA marketplace coverage.' 'It seems like almost the intent of some of these decisions in here is to make it more difficult for the state to provide meaningful access to affordable coverage to individuals,' she said. 'It's so directly attacking [ACA marketplace coverage] in multiple ways to make it less affordable and less accessible.' Kaitlyn Kenney Walsh, vice president of policy and research at the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, said the policies 'will have significant deleterious impact on people getting health insurance coverage through the Health Connector who have come to rely on that coverage.' U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has targeted July 4 as the deadline to get a final bill to President Donald Trump's desk in order to provide tax relief 'as soon as possible.' 'We have a very delicate equilibrium that we reached on here,' Johnson said last week. 'A lot of work went into this to find exactly the right balance.' It's not clear how the U.S. Senate will respond to the proposal, and a handful of Republicans have voiced concerns that the measure either does not do enough to reduce the national deficit or would harm Medicaid recipients. One of the most significant changes in the bill limits the eligibility of many immigrants for tax credits to help reduce the cost of health insurance plans through state-run marketplaces like the Connector. Under the bill, only lawful permanent residents, Compact of Free Association (COFA) migrants or certain immigrants from Cuba would qualify for subsidized marketplace coverage. Morse Gasteier said that change would cut 55,000 to 60,000 other legally present immigrants in Massachusetts, like those seeking asylum, refugees and those waiting for Medicaid eligibility to begin, from the Health Connector's ranks. The federal bill would create new verification requirements for marketplaces, preventing enrollees from receiving tax credits toward premiums or cost-sharing reductions until their eligibility is confirmed, according to a detailed analysis by health policy nonprofit KFF. It would also largely limit auto-renewals and mandate marketplaces hold annual open enrollment periods from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, about five weeks shorter than the Health Connector has offered for more than a decade. 'The bill would make it so that people need to verify information before they even see that they qualified for a lower-cost option, which will effectively mean that many people will just think they don't qualify and will not even try to submit documents because they think, 'I'm not eligible for subsidized coverage,' which will prevent many people from actually enrolling into insurance,' Frigand said. Morse Gasteier said the additional hurdles will 'make the process of obtaining and keeping coverage harder for everybody.' If fewer people are covered, she said, the remaining insured population will become higher-risk and higher-cost as a result. 'With respect to the administrative burdens and the red tape and the needless kind of sludge that this bill would erect for people that are trying to get and keep coverage, we would expect — just based on the way health insurance works and the way human behavior operates — younger and healthier people will probably not go through the trouble of making their way through all of these hoops,' she said. And when Bay Staters get ill or injured while not carrying insurance, the eventual health care costs will be 'borne by our entire health care system and passed on to premium payers through hospital debt that needs to be spread across the rest of the population,' Morse Gasteier said. Some of the impact could come not from the reconciliation package itself, but from congressional inaction. The pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act and Inflation Reduction Act expanded ACA tax credits that help subsidize premium costs, and those credits are set to expire at the end of the year. The federal bill on the move does not extend those credits. 'It's been a really significant help to the state, to the ConnectorCare program and to individuals who are just over that cliff for eligibility for those premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act baseline,' Morse Gasteier said. State law requires most adults who can afford it to have health insurance coverage for the entire year or pay a tax penalty. Many Bay Staters get health insurance through their employers, and MassHealth provides coverage to those with low incomes or disabilities. The Connector offers plans for individuals who do not qualify for MassHealth and also cannot get covered through their employers, such as people working multiple part-time jobs or gig workers, as well as a subsidized ConnectorCare Program. Healey described the Connector's membership as 'people who make just a little bit too much to qualify for MassHealth but are still just getting by.' 'Who are these people? There are a lot of people running small businesses. They're people who are self-employed,' Healey said at a Tuesday event where she warned about major health care impacts from the reconciliation bill. 'The Republicans and Donald Trump want to slash funding for the Health Connector as well, and this is going to drive up premiums, force 100,000 families to go without coverage. So you can see, the proposed cuts, if they go through, they're devastating for Massachusetts residents, for families, for employers, for our economy, for people across the state.' Lawmakers and Healey agreed on a pilot expanding income eligibility for the ConnectorCare program from 300% of the federal poverty level to 500%. Both Healey and the House in their fiscal 2026 budget bills proposed extending the pilot another year, but the Senate did not include the extension in its redraft. Sen. Cindy Friedman, co-chair of Senate Committee on Steering and Policy, noted Wednesday that the pilot is available, albeit temporarily. 'I would like you to tell your patients that, while it lasts, the Connector in Massachusetts has raised their subsidies to 500% of the poverty level,' Friedman told the CEO of an organization that operates sexual and reproductive health clinics. 'And that has made a real profound difference in people getting into health care.' WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
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Chick-fil-A opening new restaurant in Massachusetts next week
A national quick-service restaurant chain known for its signature chicken sandwiches and hospitality is opening a new restaurant in Massachusetts next week. Chick-fil-A's new eatery is located at 4A Highland Commons East in Hudson. It will open its doors on Thursday, June 5. It's one of seven new restaurants opening in Massachusetts this year, followed by five to eight more expected restaurants by the end of 2027. The new Chick-fil-A is set to serve guests Monday through Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. with dine-in, drive-thru, carry-out, delivery, catering, and mobile ordering options. Patriot Place in Foxboro is gearing up to welcome a Chick-fil-A location in the fall. The new restaurants planned for Massachusetts will be a mix of locally owned and licensed locations and will collectively create an estimated 1,600 jobs for residents across the Bay State, according to Chick-fil-A. In addition to Hudson and Foxboro, Chick-fil-A said Bay Staters can anticipate new restaurants in Danvers, Hudson, Worcester, East Springfield, West Springfield, Somerset, Dartmouth, and in Boston at South Station and Logan International Airport by the end of 2027. There are already 19 Chick-fil-A locations in Massachusetts. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
