Page 54 - Healthcare News July/August 2022

State Senate Moves to Protect Reproductive and Gender-affirming Care
BOSTON — On July 13, the Massachusetts State Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan bill protecting providers, residents, and visitors to the Commonwealth who engage in legally protected reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare.
“An Act Expanding Protections for Reproductive and Gender-affirming Care” includes provisions preventing the Commonwealth’s cooperation with ‘bounty-style’ anti-abortion and anti-gender-affirming care laws in other states, mandates health-insurance coverage for abortion and abortion-related care with no cost sharing, ensures access to emergency contraception, and provides confidentiality to providers of reproductive and gender- affirming care.
With a version of a bill expanding protections for re- productive and gender-affirming care having passed both branches of the Legislature, a conference committee will be appointed to resolve differences between the bill’s two versions.
The bill, filed by state Sen. Cindy Friedman, expands on her amendment to the Senate FY 2023 budget, which was filed in response to the leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson and adopted by the Senate in late May.
Friedman, Senate chair of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing and the lead sponsor of the bill, called the legislation “a monumental step forward in Massachusetts, as we are seeing increasingly more anti- abortion and anti-gender-affirming care legislation rise across the country. We must do everything to protect
the rights of our providers, patients, and visitors to the Commonwealth. As we further realize the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson in our Commonwealth, we will continue to fight these attacks on reproductive and gender-affirming care with meaningful action.”
Under the legislation, physicians, nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, psychologists, genetic counsel-
ors, and social workers are insulated from legal action in Massachusetts courts as a result of providing healthcare services that are legal in Massachusetts. This language specifically protects reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare, which has been the target of laws passed in states like Texas and Oklahoma that seek to limit this critical care beyond their states’ borders. This bill also allows anyone who faces abusive litigation in another state for providing legally protected reproductive and gender- affirming care services to sue in Massachusetts court to obtain a judgment, including actual damages, expenses, costs, and reasonable attorney’s fees.
The governor would be prevented under the legisla- tion from extraditing someone to another state to face charges for an abortion, gender-dysphoria treatment,
or another protected service, except when required by federal law or unless the acts forming the basis of the investigation would also constitute an offense if occurring entirely in Massachusetts. Law-enforcement agencies in Massachusetts would also be prohibited from assisting any investigation by federal authorities, another state, or private citizens related to legally protected reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare provided in the Com- monwealth.
Courts would similarly be barred from ordering anyone in Massachusetts to testify or produce documents for lawsuits involving those practices, and judges could not issue any summons in a case concerning those healthcare services unless the offense in question would also violate Massachusetts law.
An amendment was adopted during debate requir-
ing public higher-education institutions to work with
the Department of Public Health (DPH) to create a medication-abortion readiness plan which must provide medication abortion at a health center on campus or provide a referral to a nearby healthcare facility offering abortion care. It also creates a trust fund for public higher- education institutions to support the implementation of
their medication-abortion readiness plans.
In response to stories about women not receiving ac-
cess to abortion care in Massachusetts currently allowed under the existing state law, an amendment was adopted to clarify the circumstances that treating physicians must consider when determining whether to provide later-in- pregnancy abortion care. The amendment requires such determinations to be made by the treating physician and patient. To ensure hospitals are complying with the law, the amendment also requires healthcare facilities provid- ing these services to file their procedures and processes for providing services consistent with the law with DPH. Additional amendments would identify areas of the
state with limited abortion access to increase care to those areas and allow pharmacists to prescribe and dispense hormonal contraceptive patches and self-administered oral hormonal contraceptives. The bill implements a state- wide standing order to ensure that emergency contracep- tion can be dispensed at any pharmacy in the Common- wealth.
In addition, the legislation requires the Group Insur- ance Commission and commercial health-insurance carriers to cover abortions and abortion-related care and ensure Massachusetts patients are not charged a cost-sharing amount, such as deductibles, co-payments, or similar charges, for such coverage. It also requires MassHealth to cover abortion and abortion-related care and ensures enrollees are not charged a cost-sharing amount for prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, abortion, or abortion-related care.
The bill also allows individuals engaged in the provi- sion, facilitation, or promotion of reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare to enroll in the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Address Confidentiality Program. This action will increase the safety of those who may face threats or violence outside of the workplace in their personal lives or at their residences.
BFAIR Receives $15,000 from Fraternal Order of the Eagles
NORTH ADAMS — In June, BFAIR was honored as the state charity for the Massachusetts Fraternal Order of the Eagles (FOE) Auxiliary.
Sharon Barrett, a BFAIR employee since 2012, chose BFAIR as the state charity during her past year as the Massachusetts State Auxiliary President. The motto of the FOE, ‘people helping people,’ resonates through chapters
state-, country-, and worldwide. Because of the dedicated work of Barrett alongside Betty Cahill-Corbin, North Adams 310, Massachusetts State Auxiliary, Massachusetts State Aerie, and the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, BFAIR received more than $15,000 in grants and donations.
“This impactful donation will provide accessibility equipment for BFAIR’s residential and day habilitation
services, as well as provide resources to promote inde- pendence and offset out-of-pocket costs for participants across programs,” said Tara Jacobsen, Fundraising and Grants manager at BFAIR.
Anyone interested in making an impact at BFAIR can reach out to Jacobsen at tjacobsen@bfair.org.
Medical Students Awarded Remillard Family Community Fund Grants
WORCESTER — Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) students Hye In Sarah Lee, MD/PhD student, and Pooja Dutta, MD student, were among the recipients of grants from the Remillard Family Com- munity Service Fund for projects aiming to improve local health.
The fund’s 2022 funding cycle sup-
ports 10 community-outreach projects proposed and led by faculty, residents, or students at UMass Chan Medical School.
“Food for Thought: A Nutrition Outreach Program for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness” — a project by Lee and Dutta along with medical students Lauren Shumate, Kai-Lou Yue, and Marko Stojcevski; psychiatry resident Dr. Yumi
Kovic; and Dr. Xiaoduo Fan, professor of Psychiatry — will provide food, recipes, and cooking supplies at community loca- tions to help patients with severe mental illness improve their diets. It will also pilot several community vegetable gardens.
“Creating a Longitudinal Case Manage- ment Program Within the Worcester Free Care Collaborative” — a project by Lee
along with medical students Nikita Joshi and Madeline Schwartz and Dr. James Ledwith, assistant professor of Family Medicine and Community Health — will expand and improve case-management operations to be more comprehensive and ongoing and better-connected to other social-service organizations in Worcester.
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