Cuts to home care are merely a precursor to the devastation that will follow as Medicaid cuts reach our hospitals, community health centers, and nursing homes.
Medicaid
Posted inState Government
Growing health care pressure drives up spending in Healey’s annual budget
MassHealth spending would increase more than 7 percent under Gov. Maura Healey’s new state budget proposal, roughly twice as much as all other state spending in a reflection of the challenge Beacon Hill faces to control health care costs.
Posted inOpinion
Here’s how modernizing the licensing of physician assistants will help Mass. compete for federal dollars
MASSACHUSETTS HAS LONG benefited from its reputation as a national leader in health care policy and delivery. That leadership, however, also brings fiscal exposure. Because the Commonwealth expanded Medicaid earlier […]
Posted inOpinion
Can Healey’s health care affordability push actually move the needle?
For now, the announcement of the new working group offers promise, not proof. Whether it delivers real affordability will depend less on process and far more on what happens if meaingful recommendations hit the Legislature.
Posted inState Government
What to expect when you’re expecting (legislative action)
Major policy issues like housing affordability, primary care access, and utility bills loom over Beacon Hill in 2026, when voters could also decide a dozen ballot questions and pick statewide elected officials.
Posted inState Government
Our top five Beacon Hill stories of 2025
The Democrats who control the levers of power in Massachusetts spent most of the year fretting about upheaval from the federal government and preparing for more expansive action down the line.
Posted inHealth Care
Healey explores options to cover Mass. residents losing health insurance
Healey said Tuesday that the loss of subsidies will translate into “upwards of 350,000” Mass. residents losing their health insurance.
Posted inOpinion
Instead of a war on poverty, we wage war on the poor
EVERY SAFETY NET in this country has been stitched with holes just wide enough for many of us to slip through. We’ve recently had a front row seat to this […]
Posted inOpinion
I don’t want to close any more mental health centers
The cost of operating our clinic with optimal staffing simply exceeded by a wide margin the amount we received from insurers – largely the state Medicaid program MassHealth – to operate it.
Posted inThe Download
The Download: ‘We are terrified’: Gateway City leaders prepare for federal cuts, changes to Medicaid
New from CommonWealth Beacon OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS?: Hidden among the cuts to social welfare programs in President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill was a provision that builds on “Opportunity Zones” — an […]
Posted inHealth
‘We are terrified’: Gateway City leaders prepare for federal cuts, changes to Medicaid
The Trump administration’s tax bill will likely hit hardest in the state’s Gateway Cities as work requirements and Medicaid eligibility checks ramp up.
Posted inHealth Care
‘Pay now or pay greater later’: Mass. health centers CEO warns Medicaid cuts will lead to higher costs and strain to health system
Thirty percent of the Massachusetts population (2.1 million residents out of 7.1 million) are on Medicaid.
Posted inHealth Care
Speaker Johnson sends signals on two key Medicaid reforms
Johnson told reporters that the bill will not change the portion of state Medicaid costs paid by the federal government for states that have expanded Medicaid, like Massachusetts.
Posted inOpinion
The stress test facing Massachusetts health care
Now is the time for providers, payers, and legislators to come together to develop solutions that reduce administrative burdens for providers, increase investments in primary care, and strengthen safety net institutions.
Posted inHealth Care
Medicaid enrollment drops by 383,000 from COVID high
The state’s combined Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program had nearly 2.04 million members at the end of May, according to new data. That’s about 15 percent fewer than when Massachusetts set out in spring 2023 on a gargantuan, federally mandated campaign to decide who qualifies for the subsidized insurance coverage for the first time since the pandemic.
Posted inCourts
When is a spouse not a spouse under Medicaid rules?
After five years of back and forth on the issue, including three formal hearings, MassHealth denied Tingos coverage, even after he passed away in 2020. The state agency said Tingos’s wife was not “genuinely uncooperative.”
Posted inHealth Care
BMC chief backs Medicaid for all
KATE WALSH says she favors Medicaid for all, not Medicare for all. It’s not a political slogan you hear much these days, but Walsh, the president and CEO of Boston Medical […]
Posted inThe Download
BMC chief backs Medicaid for all
Kate Walsh says she favors Medicaid for all, not Medicare for all. It’s not a political slogan you hear much these days, but Walsh, the president and CEO of Boston […]
Posted inPolitics
New rule could deny more immigrants green cards
AN ESTIMATED 500,000 immigrant households in Massachusetts could see their path to permanent residency cut off by a new immigration policy put forward by the Trump administration. US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on Monday that […]
Posted inOpinion
Nailing a rung into the nursing home career ladder
AS RECENT NEWS HAS MADE CLEAR, nursing homes have a Medicaid reimbursement problem. What you may not have heard during the steady drumbeat of media coverage is that nursing homes also […]
Posted inOpinion
Getting to better health care at lower cost
FOR YEARS, “MAUREEN” struggled to manage her diabetes while battling cardiac illness, asthma, and other chronic health issues. The 70-year-old Boston-area resident was not eating well and was severely overweight […]
Posted inHealth Care
Past time to get serious about health care costs
LAST SEPTEMBER, Pioneer observed that Massachusetts had dodged a federal bullet when the US Senate failed by one vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Had they succeeded, the Commonwealth […]
Posted inHealth Care
Medicaid dental coverage is failing the poor
WE ARE LOSING a lot of really good teeth. “We” is our community of lower-income adults and children who depend on a broken Medicaid dental care system that short-changes their […]