Latest news with #MassHealth
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
A ‘historic battle': Mass pols protest Medicaid cuts in ‘Big Beautiful Bill'
When you're talking about a sprawling federal program like Medicaid, whose cost runs to the billions of dollars, it's easy to get bogged down in the numbers. In Revere on Tuesday, Dr. Michael Curry wanted to talk about people instead: The tens of millions, including thousands in Massachusetts, who have benefited from the joint state-federal health care program that dates to the headiest days of the civil rights era. There's the middle-aged woman from Southeast Massachusetts who lives with chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder. She used MassHealth, as Medicaid is known in the Bay State, to connect with a local health center that helped her with her problems, Curry, the president & CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, reflected. Or the older man from Boston, living with diabetes, who needs access to care and medication to manage his chronic health condition. Without them, he's too dizzy to walk without two canes to support him, and he could end up in a hospital emergency department after a bad fall. 'This is real stories,' Curry said. And those are the people — and many more like them — who stand to lose if the deep Medicaid cuts included in President Donald Trump's domestic policy mega-bill become the law of the land, Curry and a cadre of the state's Democratic politicians warned Tuesday. They included Gov. Maura Healey, Democratic U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, state Sen. Lydia Edwards, D-3rd Suffolk, and Revere Mayor Patrick M. Keefe Jr. To deliver the message, they gathered at Cambridge Health Alliance's Revere Care Center, which provides critical services to its community, with many patients on Medicaid. As it's currently written, the bill that passed the U.S. House by a single vote last week would reduce Medicaid spending by nearly $700 billion over a decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. That would cost the state's health care system $1.75 billion, affecting 250,000 people statewide, according to the Healey administration. 'This is not, as they would describe it, a scalpel — we've heard that term before — a scalpel to the problem," Healey said. 'It really is just a blunt-force axe. And it's going to fall on a lot of people here in Massachusetts and a lot of people around this country. People will get hurt and people will die. And it will raise costs for everyone else.' The bill still has to clear the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, where lawmakers are eyeing further changes to the legislation. If that happens, the bill will require further action by the House before it can be sent to Trump for his signature. Republicans can only afford to lose three votes if they hope to pass the bill by a simple majority. Markey, who sits on the Senate's Health Committee, has cast the fight over the bill as a 'historic battle.' 'This is going to be the defining battle over the Trump administration's 'Make America Sick Again' agenda, and whether or not Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are going to be successful in implementing this gutting of essential health care programs for our nation,' the Malden pol said. Kennedy helms the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which has oversight of Medicaid and Medicare, two of the nation's three third-rail social safety net programs. With its suite of tax cut extensions, reductions to food aid, and other spending cuts, the bill is the 'greatest transfer of wealth — from just one piece of legislation — from the poorest Americans to the richest Americans ever before in U.S. History," Warren said. 'Think about that: These guys are actually out there making history by taking away from hardworking families, from people down on their luck, from seniors, from little babies, so that a handful of billionaires and corporate CEOs can get more giveaways from the government,' Warren continued. 'That is the Republican plan. Billionaires win, everyone else loses.' And for Curry, that once again comes down to faces, and even his own family's history. Growing up in Roxbury, his mother, a housekeeper, depended on MassHealth coverage because her job didn't come with health benefits, he said. And she couldn't afford to provide them on her own. So many others on MassHealth have a similar story. They're working full-time or part-time, or they're not working at all because they're caregivers, he said. " So as we talk about fraud, waste and abuse, as we talk about changes in Medicaid policy, I want to bring a face to that," he said. Mass. Rep. Trahan's 'Les Miz' moment on Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' | Bay State Briefing Mass. budget debate points to a subtle but seismic shift on Beacon Hill | John L. Micek From Baker to Ballot: Republican Mike Kennealy makes his pitch for governor | Bay State Briefing Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hospitals flag pressure points in 'big, beautiful' U.S. House bill
BOSTON (SHNS) – While the impacts of the U.S. House GOP's tax and funding cuts legislation come into focus, the group that represents the state's hospitals said this week it is closely monitoring provider tax policy for potential changes that could make it even harder to finance care for patients on MassHealth. The U.S. House voted 215-214 along party lines last Thursday to advance the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would, among many other things, extend President Donald Trump's first-term tax cuts and reduce Medicaid spending by nearly $700 billion to help pay for it. Officials at MassHealth, the state program that combines Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, have said the Bay State could be in jeopardy of losing more than $1 billion annually, with hundreds of thousands of residents at risk of losing coverage. The Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, in its first weekly 'Monday Report' since passage of the House bill, said the current financing arrangements between hospitals, MassHealth and the federal government that deal with provider taxes 'appear to be unaffected – for now.' Health policy nonprofit KFF said the bill prohibits states from establishing any new provider taxes or from increasing existing provider tax rates, and that it makes changes 'such that some currently permissible arrangements taxes, such as those on managed care plans, will not be permissible in future years.' MassHealth had previously flagged that its annual revenue from managed care organization assessments could be at risk, and MHA said Monday that 'any further adjustments to future spending, including the next iteration of the MassHealth waiver in 2027, would be severely limited.' Massachusetts has a $67 billion Medicaid waiver that it secured under Gov. Charlie Baker in October 2022 that allows the state to tailor the public health insurance programs to more closely align with specific preferences and needs here. That waiver is set to run for five years, expiring in 2027, or during Trump's second term. 'That, in turn, would place new pressures on financing care delivered to MassHealth patients. The state's healthcare-related tax on health insurers would need to be modified per the House bill (and a related Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed rule),' MHA said. The American Hospital Association said the U.S. House bill 'severely restrict[s] the use of legitimate state funding resources and supplemental payment programs, including provider taxes and state directed payments, under the guise of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.' The group said that it rejects that notion 'as these critical, legitimate and well-established Medicaid financing programs are essential to offset decades of chronic underpayments of the cost of care provided to Medicaid patients.' Changes to the insurer tax could have downstream effects, MHA said. The tax is one component of funding for the state's Health Safety Net program, which is already experiencing a massive deficiency. The House adopted an amendment to its budget on April 28 that would effectuate a $230 million transfer from the Commonwealth Care Trust Fund to help the Health Safety Net program, which supports care provided to low-income, uninsured or under-insured patients by hospitals and community health centers. Last month, Rep. John Lawn said the program updated its funding assumptions in fiscal 2024 and now faces a funding shortfall of as much as $260 million in fiscal 2026. He said the Commonwealth Care Trust Fund has a current balance of more than $367 million with additional revenues expected this fiscal year and that state finance law allows such a transfer 'as necessary to provide payments to acute hospitals and community health centers for reimbursable health services.' 'Without funding relief, safety net hospitals will face unsustainable reductions in financial support for care for the low-income, uninsured or under-insured patients,' Lawn said in April. The Senate did not follow suit in its budget, and an amendment MHA backed (#482 from Sen. Barry Finegold) to make the same $230 million transfer was rejected. Sen. William Driscoll withdrew an amendment (#489) that would have required the state and insurers to each contribute to address the shortfall. Sen. Cindy Friedman, Lawn's co-chair on the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, said the two amendments were 'voted down at this particular moment in time for reasonable reasons.' She said the number of people without insurance or without enough insurance seeking care 'has been rising significantly and has put our hospitals and community health centers in a very precarious financial situation.' As a result, the Health Safety Net program 'has seen enormous amount of use because of people's inability to either pay for health insurance or to get health insurance that covers their medically necessary needs,' Friedman said last week. 'I would like to just make the statement that we are very aware of this problem. It is very serious. We take it seriously, and the Senate is committed to finding a solution that supports our hospitals and community health centers and that makes the program sustainable over time,' she said. MHA's roundup additionally touched on the U.S. House bill's provisions requiring states to redetermine Medicaid eligibility every six months for beneficiaries enrolled through an Affordable Care Act expansion of Medicaid and imposing work requirements as a condition to eligibility for most able-bodied adults enrolled in Medicaid. Both requirements, the group said, will make it harder for people to get or keep insurance and will increase administrative burdens for states and health care providers. The group also flagged a provision blocking federal matching funds for services rendered by providers who took more than $1 million in Medicaid payments in 2024 and offer certain abortion procedures. MHA said the U.S. House bill reduces the federal matching rate from 90% to 80% for states, like Massachusetts, that use state Medicaid funds to cover undocumented immigrants and certain lawfully present immigrants. MHA said Massachusetts covers children regardless of citizenship status through the Children's Medical Security Program and provides state-funded coverage to certain low-income immigrants, some of which might be subject to the proposed restriction. U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan cited the reduction in matching rate last week when she said the bill 'slashes $3.7 billion from MassHealth' over 10 years and will cause 270,000 people in Massachusetts to lose health insurance coverage. The Congressional Budget Office said last week that the bill that passed the U.S. House will mean $698 billion less in federal subsidies for Medicaid, $267 billion less in federal spending for SNAP, $64 billion less in net spending for all other purposes, and a $3.8 trillion increase in the federal deficit all over the next decade. The CBO also said that it expects the reductions in federal spending to lead to about $78 billion in additional spending among the 50 states 'accounting for changes in state contributions to SNAP and Medicaid and for state tax and spending policies necessary to finance additional spending.' The office said it is currently analyzing 'expectations of the states' responses to changes in federal funding.' The budget plans the House and Senate will begin negotiating Thursday into a final fiscal 2026 state budget assume about $15.76 billion in federal revenues, an increase over the $14.3 billion in the current budget, including $14.2 billion in federal MassHealth reimbursements alone. Most cuts in the U.S. House bill would hit in federal fiscal year 2027, which begins Oct. 1, 2026 (three months into Massachusetts' fiscal year 2027). The CBO concluded that 'U.S. households, on average, would see an increase in the resources provided to them by the government over the 2026–2034 period' if the U.S. House bill were enacted. But the benefits would be unevenly distributed and tilt more towards high-income households. For families in the lowest 10% of income distribution, household resources would be expected to decrease by 2% of income in 2027 and increasing to 4% by 2033 'mainly as a result of losses of in-kind transfers, such as Medicaid and SNAP,' the CBO said. But for households in the top 10% of income, resources would be expected to grow by 4% in 2027 and slowing to 2% in 2033 'mainly because of reductions in they taxes they owe.' 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.
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
‘A blunt force axe': Mass. Democrats warn of harm to hospitals, health care under Trump budget proposal
Advertisement About 2 million people statewide are enrolled in MassHealth, which covers almost half of the state's children and close to 70 percent of nursing home residents. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey joined Healey and said the news conference was just the start of their party's effort to derail the legislation. 'The cuts to Medicaid are Draconian, the cuts to SNAP are Draconian,' Markey said. Republicans describe the legislation as 'rocket fuel' for the US economy and a response to the wishes of voters who gave them a majority in Congress. The bill passed the House last week by just one vote. The state's US senators noted even some of their Republican colleagues expressed reservations about such significant cuts to the nation's safety net. Democrats hope the bill stalls in the Senate, forcing the House to come up with another proposal. Advertisement 'Our job at this moment is to raise the stakes here, so everyone across this country can see exactly who's going to be hurt and exactly who's going to be helped by the Republican budget,' Warren said. If the budget bill passes as written, estimates of the number of Americans who will be left without insurance over the next decade range from 8 million, the Congressional Budget Office reported, to about 14 million, according to estimates from left-leaning think tanks like the Center for American Progress. For months, Congress has sought to offset trillions in tax cuts with reduced spending, and Medicaid, one of the federal government's most expensive mandatory programs, is a juicy target. The current bill would cut an estimated $698 billion from Medicaid over the next decade. That translates into a wealth transfer to the rich in several ways, Warren said. The proposed Medicaid cuts would likely inhibit entrepreneurship in the country, she said, robbing small business owners of health care security as they attempt to start a new venture. Medicaid also gives stability to people working low-paying jobs. And it is a critical safety net that gives people with disabilities home health services and support that allows them to stay out of nursing homes. Dennis Heaphy, an advocate with the Massachusetts Disability Policy Consortium, said he would likely be in a nursing home without MassHealth support. A quadriplegic, Heaphy said he doubts he would receive the care he needs if he had to move to a long-term care facility. Advertisement 'If I go to a nursing home then I'll die,' he said at the press conference. A concerned citizen shared his thoughts about what would happen if the Medicaid budget was cut during a visit to the Cambridge Health Alliance Revere Care Center on Tuesday, in Revere. During the visit, a panel discussed the impacts of President Trump's bill in Congress that would take away health care from Massachusetts children, families, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe Republicans frame the cuts as a money-saving attack on fraudulent claims and expensive loopholes. Among the most powerful provisions in the bill are new requirements that states confirm Medicaid recipients' eligibility more frequently, and that many adult Medicaid recipients work or put in time volunteering or taking classes in exchange for benefits. Health policy experts note a work requirement solves a problem that largely doesn't exist. Most Medicaid recipients who are able to work do, either full time or part time. They just don't have jobs that offer health coverage and don't make enough to pay for insurance on their own. Work requirements and eligibility checks make it more complicated, more time consuming, and more difficult to receive Medicaid coverage. Such policies save money, experts said, by making it harder for people eligible for Medicaid to receive it. 'And what's going to happen to all these people?' Healey asked at the news conference. 'Some will end up in the street. Many will end up in emergency rooms.' Uninsured patients are likely to arrive at the state's emergency departments with more acute health problems, health care executives said. Massachusetts ER's already have among the The cuts could create a nightmare scenario for hospitals that serve a large percentage of patients covered through MassHealth or Medicare. They'd lose revenue at the same time as demand on their emergency departments would increase, said Dr. Eric Dickson, chief executive at UMass Memorial Health, which operates five hospitals in central Massachusetts. Advertisement More than half the health system's patients rely on some form of government coverage, he said in an interview. 'Wait until you come to my emergency department and you're sitting there for an extra two hours because we failed to support the Medicaid system,' Dickson said. Hospitals could have to choose between cutting services or raising costs. Typically obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatric, and primary care departments don't make money, he said, and these departments could be most vulnerable if a hospital has to start cutting. 'Ultimately it all gets passed on to the patient,' Dickson said. The state's 50 community health centers are a bulwark of primary care in Massachusetts and often have a significant population of Medicaid-covered patients. Places like Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, already struggling financially, would be severely hurt by a major cut to Medicaid, said Dr. Maria Celli, chief executive, in a recent interview. Hobbling community health centers undermines the Trump administration's stated goal of refocusing national health care priorities on chronic conditions. 'A fundamental purpose of primary care is to keep people well,' Celli said, 'to prevent . . . the development or the exacerbation of any chronic illness.' An average 31 percent of community health centers' money comes through Medicaid, said Michael Curry, chief executive of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, at the news conference. Warren described the impact on hospitals and health centers, with the possibility of some closing, as another way Congress' proposal turns into a transfer of wealth from poor to rich. 'So that's how it starts to echo through the system,' she said. Advertisement Jason Laughlin can be reached at
Boston Globe
24-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
What Trump's ‘beautiful bill' means for Medicaid, food stamps, and Massachusetts
Advertisement This disruption of the social safety net could cost Massachusetts more than $1.5 billion a year by increasing state contributions for these benefits and penalizing the state for continuing to use its own funds to Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up House Republicans say the restrictions in President Trump's The extension of the tax credits in the bill would also disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. The fifth of residents earning the least would get just 1 percent of the bill's net tax cuts next year, according to the Advertisement 'The purpose of this bill is to give tax cuts to the richest people in the country,' said Viviana Abreu-Hernandez, president of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. 'They are doing this by cutting the budget for services that the most vulnerable populations in the country need to be able to survive.' The bill would require Work requirements don't increase employment, however, according to Work requirements would also be levied on more recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In addition to those already required to work, recipients with children above the age of 6, including grandparents up to age 65, would have to work — or be enrolled in job training or community service — at least 20 hours a week to receive benefits for more than three months. For parents who can't afford child care or don't have transportation, this is untenable, advocates say. Advertisement Immigrants here legally would also become ineligible for SNAP under the House bill. Undocumented immigrants are already barred from benefits. All told, more than 250,000 Massachusetts residents, including children, are at risk of losing some or all of their SNAP benefits, according to the For the first time in the program's history, states would have to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits, ranging from 5 to 25 percent, depending on their payment error rate. States' share of administrative costs would also rise, from 50 to 75 percent. The federal SNAP program, known colloquially as food stamps, has been a stabilizing force during recessions, supporting families and, in turn, local economies when state resources are dropping. In Massachusetts, SNAP adds more than $2.6 billion a year to the economy, benefiting more than 5,500 farmers and retailers. The proposed cuts — which Erin McAleer, chief executive of the anti-hunger nonprofit Project Bread calls 'the most devastating attack on food assistance in our lifetime' — would force the state to absorb $710 million in new costs each year, the organization said. Some states might even opt to stop offering SNAP benefits entirely. With fewer people on MassHealth, hospitals, nursing homes, and community health centers would get less revenue; people would get sicker and crowd emergency rooms — changes that would also impact patients without MassHealth. Administrative costs for tracking work requirements, more frequent eligibility renewals, and other changes will put an additional burden on state coffers. To compensate for these changes, states may cut back on benefits or tighten eligibility requirements, advocates said. Some might raise taxes. Advertisement What isn't in doubt is the effect the bill could have on income inequality. The House measure would decrease household resources in the lowest tenth of the income distribution by 2 to 4 percent over the next eight years — mainly due to the loss of Medicaid and SNAP — and increase resources for households in the top 10 percent by the same margin — largely because of tax reductions — according to the 'It's going to make sick people sicker,' said Kate Symmonds, a senior health law attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. 'It's going to make poor people poorer. … It's going to make wealthy people richer.' Regardless of what the Senate does, the bill will cause harm, said Victoria Negus, senior economic justice advocate at the institute, following an election in which one of voters' biggest concerns was the cost of groceries. 'This package as a whole says to the American people: We are prioritizing the needs of the wealthy and the few, the well connected and the privileged, over every family in this country who is working hard to get by and does not make enough money to put food on the table or afford health care,' she said. 'It is a monumental step back in efforts to end hunger and poverty and improve health outcomes.' This story was produced by the Globe's team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter . Advertisement Katie Johnston can be reached at
Boston Globe
23-05-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
Trump's sweeping bill targets gender-affirming health care for all ages
A second measure reaches further still; it would require the Affordable Care Act to exclude these types of services from the definition of 'essential health benefits,' which are the most basic health services that all health insurance plans in the ACA must cover, such as hospitalizations and prescription drugs. Advertisement The measure, if approved by the Congress, would go into effect in January 2027. That doesn't mean private insurance plans can't cover gender-affirming care, but it makes it much less likely they will do so, said Sean Cahill, director of health policy research at the 'To deny people medically necessary health care, it's discriminatory, and it's cruel,' Cahill said. He said transgender people are more likely to be low-income than the general population and so probably rely more on Medicaid. The proposed new measures threaten to exacerbate already existing health disparities in the transgender population and anti-transgender discrimination in health care, Cahill said. Advertisement The idea of prohibiting the use of Medicaid funds for gender-affirming care has been percolating within the Republican Party and at the state level for some time. Ten states, including Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, already have state But in about two dozen other states, including Massachusetts, the state Medicaid policy explicitly covers transgender-related health care. 'This care is evidence-based, medically necessary, and endorsed by every major medical society in the United States,' Cahill said. 'Ultimately this will cost our health system more in disease care and cost our economy more due to lost productivity.' Fenway is planning to lobby Massachusetts' congressional delegation to push back against the measure as it proceeds to the Senate. Public opinion across the country seems to be aligned with Trump's agenda on this issue. found that a majority of those surveyed opposed gender-affirming medical treatment covered by public health insurance, like Medicaid, for adults or children. MassHealth, Massachusetts' Medicaid Program, could not provide specific analysis Thursday on what the latest budget proposal would mean for its ability to cover gender-affirming care. The state's Medicaid administrator has maintained a wait-and-see approach as each iteration of proposed Medicaid funding and cuts have emerged. MassHealth is not pausing or ending any programs or making changes to the care it reimburses. While the federal bill remains under debate, the state agency has not received any new directives from the federal government. Advertisement 'If we receive such directives, we will carefully analyze those and will communicate impacts to our plans and providers as appropriate,' a spokesperson said Thursday. About 276,000 trans people are enrolled in Medicaid nationwide, UCLA's Williams Institute School of Law Targeting gender-affirming care offers government minimal savings, but it does fit with the administration's pattern of scapegoating the population, said Nina Selvaggio, executive director of the Greater Boston PFLAG. The impact on trans communities would likely be devastating, she said. People who rely on hormone treatments could abruptly lose access to those drugs, potentially causing dangerous side effects and sudden changes in their appearance. A large element of gender-affirming care is not the drugs prescribed or the procedures performed, but the approach to patient care that involves cultural competence and sensitivity to the needs of trans patients. It is unclear how changes to Medicaid could prevent doctors from responding to the unique circumstances of their patients, but if such sensitivity is discouraged, it could push the trans community to be less likely to seek out needed medical care. 'Ensuring that they don't fall victim to not taking care of easily preventable diseases… that's what gender-affirming care really is," Selvaggio said. Seemingly straightforward directives in the budget proposal also could be complicated in the application. For instance, most procedures or prescriptions that could fall under the umbrella of gender-affirming care are not exclusively for trans people, Selvaggio said. A woman transitioning to become a man may seek a breast reduction or mastectomy, but so, too, could a cisgender woman concerned about her vulnerability to breast cancer or someone whose breast size is causing her discomfort. Likewise, hormone blockers have medical uses beyond trans care, she said. If the proposal became law, a blanket ban on such treatments would harm people beyond the trans community, putting Medicaid in the position of making case-by-case decisions for each claim that could potentially require intrusive inquiries into the personal life and sexual habits of patients. Advertisement 'We're normalizing these absurd violations of our humanity and our personhood,' she said. Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at Jennifer Levi spoke in Washington, D.C., in February after a hearing to consider a preliminary injunction challenging President Trump's proposed ban on transgender people in the military. JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images 'It's clearly part of this relentless attack by the administration to make transgender people's lives impossible,' she said. 'It's consistent with what we've seen rolling out from the administration and the pressure that it is putting on states and every agency of government to put tremendous barriers in the way of transgender people just living their lives.' There have been several lawsuits challenging the rollback by some states of gender-affirming care. Advocates pushing back against those restrictions at the federal district court level have seen some success, Levi said. But a 'I'm hopeful that the courts will see these kinds of attacks for what they are, which is a desire to harm a vulnerable group,' she said. 'They're certainly not rooted in any medical science or guidelines or protocols. It's really just a basic attack on a vulnerable group.' Advertisement Kay Lazar can be reached at
