Policymakers must work with insurers and GLP-1 manufacturers to make sure these life-changing therapies remain accessible. Blanket denials of coverage will harm patients, invite long-term costs, and worsen the stigma we should be fighting against.
Health
Posted inOpinion
Massachusetts communities are learning to predict — and prevent — domestic violence homicide
Many domestic violence homicides are not random. They are often preceded by recognizable warning signs. When communities are trained to recognize those signs and respond together, outcomes can change.
Posted inOpinion
It’s time to act on the state’s PFAS problem
If we don’t act soon, local water districts will have to go to ever greater and costlier lengths to prevent PFAS from contaminating our drinking water.
Posted inHealth
Policy Points: Takeaways from the 2026 Medicaid Summit
As the agency navigates how to minimize coverage losses, cope with federal funding cuts and keep MassHealth members informed, the 2026 Medicaid Summit on Tuesday brought together state government policy experts and researchers from around the country to make sense of the impacts of the nearly one-year-old federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Posted inOpinion
Massachusetts should join the 43 states that allow psychologists to provide telehealth therapy across state lines
Competing priorities and legislative inertia are the only reasons Massachusetts has not caught up to the other states that have already taken this step to enhance access and continuity of behavioral health care.
Posted inCourts
Record-smashing tobacco verdict doesn’t warrant a new trial, SJC rules
Massachusetts’s highest court on Wednesday affirmed $56 million in punitive damages in a wrongful death suit against tobacco giant Philip Morris, rejecting the company’s argument that a jury’s initial award was so extreme it demonstrated prejudice requiring a new trial.
Posted inOpinion
An Earth Day call to action against dangerous rollback of federal environmental protections
The EPA’s Endangerment Finding has served as the backbone of action under the Clean Air Act to limit pollution from motor vehicles, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. The Trump administration axed it.
Posted inState House News Service
Doula certification effort set for launch this spring
“The Department of Public Health is working with MassHealth to implement more than 20 provisions within the 2024 maternal health law designed to bolster access to services and tackle racial disparities in care outcomes.”
Posted inOpinion
What Norway’s dominance at the Winter Olympics can teach us about youth sports
American sports culture clings to the belief that early competition builds champions—that competition produces toughness, and that lowering the stakes makes kids soft. Norway offers the most compelling counterexample imaginable.
Posted inState Government
‘It just requires people to be destitute’: Healey draws criticism over push to tighten eligibility for safety-net program
Five years after lawmakers scrapped the asset limit attached to the Emergency Aid to the Elderly, Disabled, and Children program, Gov. Maura Healey wants to bring it back at a higher threshold — a move that advocates say will impose unnecessary burdens on at-risk recipients.
Posted inHousing
Trump administration targets program for chronically homeless residents, sparking fear for vulnerable populations in cities like Springfield
The overhaul has been temporarily and partially blocked by a federal judge, but the move is impacting local administrators of the federal program across Massachusetts and has threatened millions of dollars in funding for permanent housing and thousands of beds for the chronically homeless.
Posted inHealth
As cases rise, flu-related illness claims lives of two Boston children
TWO BOSTON CHILDREN under the age of two have died from flu-related illness, marking the city’s first pediatric influenza deaths since 2013 and raising alarms as flu cases surge and […]
Posted inOpinion
Understanding the Massachusetts health care crisis, with help from Muhammad Ali
While there was general consensus at the hearing that it can’t be business as usual, the ideas offered up for what to do about it were piecemeal. There was no coherent roadmap, no shared strategy, and certainly nothing resembling a statewide plan.
Posted inHealth Care
Health care workplace violence bill finding traction
According to a bill summary, someone in a Massachusetts health care facility is assaulted, threatened or verbally abused every 38 minutes.
Posted inGovernment
DTA: Some food aid recipients will see benefits drop to ‘zero’
“I’m trying to do the best I can to manage the situation,” Healey said. She added, “No state can come forward and replace what the federal government has taken away.”
Posted inGovernment
Looming federal food aid cuts put state Democrats in the hot seat
Massachusetts Democrats are unwilling to tap into the state’s significant savings balance to replace food aid, previewing difficult decisions that loom on the horizon.
Posted inState Government
Health care advocate joining state service as undersecretary
“Amy Rosenthal, executive director of the nonprofit Health Care For All, will join state government next month as undersecretary of health, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday.”
Posted inHealth
Trump administration handling of vaccine guidelines causes unnecessary confusion, rift with scientific community
A WEEK AGO, the CDC’s acting director signed off on the recommendations made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an external panel that sets US vaccine policy. The […]
Posted inHealth Care
Two years after the closure of Leominster’s maternity unit, a region is struggling
It’s been two years since Clinton Hospital’s maternity unit closed. The fallout of the closure paints a complicated picture in a state without maternity care deserts. But experts and advocates say recent losses and impending cuts to Medicaid make maternal health care access in Massachusetts something that stands to get worse.
