While Republicans in DC have been attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, many progressives have been wondering what work can be done here in Massachusetts. We have stalwart progressive senators like Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, and a fully Democratic House delegation. And many of you have stepped up to the plate, calling people in other states to urge them to take action.
For now, activists have stalled the ACA repeal bill. But here in Massachusetts, our Republican governor Charlie Baker is pushing the Republicans’ anti-health care agenda.
Late last month, Baker submitted a list of health care proposals he wanted to see rolled into the budget without any public hearing or debate. That budget is being unveiled later this morning and voted on only hours later. Legislators need to hear from us NOW so they know what to look out for.
Baker’s wish list would make his Republican friends in Washington proud:
Cutting MassHealth eligibility for adults with incomes between 100% and 133% of the federal poverty level. This would drop 100,000 low-income parents and 40,000 other adults off MassHealth, subjecting them to higher premiums, and a loss of dental coverage and other vital benefits. Massachusetts would have the dubious honor of becoming the only state to repeal the Obama-era Medicaid expansion.
Removing MassHealth eligibility for individuals if they have access to so-called “affordable” employer-based insurance. These plans can still be considered “affordable” if the premiums are almost 10% of a family’s income. For people living in or near poverty, there’s no premium that’s affordable.
Allowing the Office of Health and Human Services to restructure “optional” services. And “optional” includes fundamental aspects of health care, like prescription drugs, dental care, and vision care, among many other things. Charlie Baker shouldn’t have that much unilateral power to undo protections for working families.
Imposing a five-year moratorium on insurance mandates. Even though insurance companies often leave out important types of care.
Freezing employer contributions to the unemployment insurance trust fund. A $334 million giveaway that depletes an underfunded program—to sweeten a tax on employers whose workers get coverage from MassHealth. With the economy slowing down, this move isn’t just mean—it’s dangerous.
Massachusetts has been a leader in health care reform. And we must continue to lead, by improving upon the Affordable Care Act with a single payer, Medicare for All system.
Today, we must start by not going backwards.
Call your state senator and state representative today. Urge them to reject Governor Baker’s cuts to health care in the 2018 budget, and to support the real solution of Medicare for All.
IN THE YEAR FOLLOWING a presidential election, the Massachusetts Democratic Party updates its platform. A party platform can stand as a defiant statement of goals and ideals, and a roadmap for a legislative agenda and priorities. In today’s national political climate, such aspirational declarations are especially important as they offer voters something to fight for and something to vote for.
The platform released just last week contains new planks on paid family and medical leave, a $15 minimum wage, automatic voter registration, and the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences, bolstering what was already, by and large, a progressive document.
On Saturday, June 3, delegates from across the state will convene in Worcester to approve the platform, perhaps with a few amendments to make it stronger.
On Monday, June 5, if the past is any guide, our overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature will proceed to completely ignore it.
If you’re like us, your inbox has been swamped over the past few months with rallies and action alerts about how to fight the reactionary Trump-McConnell-Ryan agenda coming out of Washington.
Massachusetts is in position to be a leader in the resistance against Trump’s agenda–and a beacon of progressive policy for the rest of the country.
Although our Republican governor, Charlie Baker, is not going to stand up to Trump as much as he should, Attorney General Maura Healey has been at the forefront of fighting for civil rights and environmental protection, among other issues, in the Age of Trump.
And Massachusetts has the third largest Democratic supermajorities in the country, with 34 out of 40 senators and 126 out of 160 representatives. In theory, then, whether or not Baker is willing to fight Trump, the Legislature has the votes to do so.
But…
The Legislature, as our scorecards (and brand new scorecard page) show, routinely fails to live up to the ideal of what one might hope for from a Legislature this overwhelmingly blue.
Trump has created a sense of urgency among progressive voters. But, based on statements on policy and priorities, we have yet to see that same urgency from the State House.
A Beacon Hill Committee to Focus on Trump
In late March, Speaker Bob DeLeo appointed nine House Democrats to a working group to guide responses to “unprecedented actions” of the Trump administration.
The group consists of House Majority Leader Ron Mariano (D-Quincy); Speaker Pro Tem Patricia Haddad (D-Somerset); Assistant Majority Leader Byron Rushing (D-South End); House Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets Chair Antonio Cabral (D-New Bedford); House Steering, Policy and Scheduling Chair James Murphy (D-Weymouth); Public Health Chair Kate Hogan (D-Stow); Health Care Financing Chair Jeffrey Sanchez (D-Jamaica Plain); Rules vice chair Marjorie Decker (D-Cambridge), and Export Development vice chair James Arciero (D-Westford).
The working group is tasked with coming up with legislative solutions that are both “necessary and feasible.” The devil, of course, will be in the details….
…whose definitions of “necessary” and “feasible”?
…Will this group aggressively push a progressive agenda, or will they settle for the lethargic status quo?
We plan to follow the working group to the best of our abilities as it moves forward. But what do we know so far?
According to State House News Service, the group will focus on “economic stability, health care, higher education, and the state’s most vulnerable residents.”
Strong, progressive policies on all of these issues have been proposed this session. (We center our Legislative Agenda on many of them!)
Where do the working group members stand on them?
Economic Stability:
Trump, along with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, wants to make an economy that works just for the top 1%. How do we promote shared prosperity by contrast? We could do so by passing a $15 minimum wage and paid family and medical leave, for starters.
Four out of the nine–Cabral, Decker, Hogan, and Rushing–have co-sponsored the Fight for $15 bill. Six–Cabral, Decker, Haddad, Hogan, Murphy, Rushing–have signed on to paid family and medical leave.
Health Care:
Trump wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, denying health care to millions. The task facing progressives is to improve and expand upon the Affordable Care Act with a single payer/Medicare for All system that truly enshrines health care as a human right.
So far, only two out of the nine–Decker and Rushing–have signed on to such legislation.
Trump and the Republican Congress also have their sights set on taking away women’s rights over their own bodies. Congress has already passed legislation enabling states to defund Planned Parenthood. Progressives shouldn’t stand for that. One of the members of the working group, Rep. Haddad, is a leader sponsor of the ACCESS bill, which would require insurance carriers to provide all contraceptive methods without a copay. Decker, Hogan, Rushing, and Sanchez have joined her in support of this bill.
Higher Education:
Massachusetts has been under-investing in higher education for years, leading to higher tuition costs and spiraling student debt. Trump could make matters worse by reducing funding for higher education institutions and federal student aid, as well as by encouraging the expansion of predatory for-profit institutions.
Only one of the nine–Rep. Decker–has come out in support of making public colleges and universities tuition-free for Massachusetts residents. Rep. Arciero joins her in a strong, but less ambitious, goal of debt-free higher education.
Protecting the State’s Most Vulnerable:
Massachusetts has the opportunity to stand up to the federal deportation machine by passing the Safe Communities Act, which would prohibit the use of state resources for deportation raids and limit local and state police collaboration with federal immigration agents. The TRUST Act, its predecessor, stalled in committee year after year. But the necessity of the bill grows stronger each day.
Four out of the nine working group members are supporters of the Safe Communities Act–Cabral, Decker, Rushing, and Sanchez.
We can look back to last session for insights into the working group. Four out of the nine members of the committee matched the Speaker vote-by-vote on our scorecard of the last session (Arciero, Cabral, Haddad, Hogan). Two of them were more conservative than the Speaker (Mariano, Murphy), and three were more progressive (Decker, Rushing, Sanchez).
The House doesn’t take many roll call votes, but some can be illustrative. Last July, for example, the House voted to make state-issued IDs compliant with the federal REAL ID law per request of Governor Baker (H.4488). Real ID’s strict documentation requirements make getting a state-issued ID more difficult for the young, the elderly, trans individuals, people of color, the poor, and many legal immigrants. H.4488 also forestalled efforts to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, something which–unlike REAL ID–would increase public safety.
Decker, Rushing, and Sanchez sided with Massachusetts’s vulnerable populations. The other six sided with the Governor.
Massachusetts Democrats often talk a good game about opposing Trump.
But will they put their priorities and votes where their mouths are this session?
During his State of the State speech last Tuesday, Governor Charlie Baker congratulated himself on his commitment to addressing the opioid epidemic. He also congratulated himself on curtailing public spending in order to reduce the deficit without raising taxes. These priorities, however, are in fundamental conflict.
In December, in an act largely buried by the news around the presidential transition, Governor Baker unilaterally cut $98 million from the state budget, taking the axe to a wide range of programs. Among the agencies hit was the state Bureau of Substance Abuse Assistance (BSAA), which faced cuts of nearly $2 million. This money is neither an abstraction nor a rounding error: this is money that would be used to hire treatment and prevention coordinators, as well as to fund various treatment and community programs that directly combat addiction in local communities.
As a working paramedic, I see the devastating effects of opioid addiction on a daily basis. Opiate overdoses have become some of the most common emergencies we respond to, and many of the patients we treat have overdosed multiple times. While many of these people are successfully resuscitated (usually through the prodigious use of Narcan), an estimated 987 Massachusetts residents died of opioid-related causes the first six months of 2016 alone.
Baker made a step in the right direction last year when he provided $700,000 in Narcan grants to communities around the state. These grants allowed communities to supply Narcan to their first responders, which undoubtedly saved lives. While Narcan grants save lives in the short-term, the only way to effectively combat the opioid epidemic is to provide lasting solutions for addicts and to develop strong prevention programs that are visible to community members. By slashing funding to the BSAA, Baker removed resources intended to provide long-term treatment and rehabilitation to addicts across the state. These resources were also aimed at stemming the epidemic at its source, through the use of school prevention specialists and community outreach programs that can help prevent people resist the pull of opiates altogether.
Such short-termism has been a pervasive problem in state budgeting, as our elected officials fail to make the long-term investments in public health, education, and transportation necessary to guarantee that the Commonwealth for all of its residents. The Fair Share Amendment (“millionaire’s tax”), which will be on the ballot next year (and for which many Progressive Mass members are volunteering), will be a step in the right direction, but there is much more work to do.
By cutting funding to long-term solutions, Baker has shown he has little interest in concrete measures to end the opioid epidemic. People are still dying, and most of them are young. Telling a mother that her child has died from an overdose is one of the hardest things I have had to do. I doubt that Governor Baker can say the same.
