FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2017

CONTACT
Emily Fitzmaurice, Massachusetts Democratic Party, 617-939-0808

Massachusetts Democratic Party: Baker’s Budget Vetoes Continue Republican Attack on Medicaid

BOSTON – The Massachusetts Democratic Party today issued the following statement regarding Governor Charlie Baker’s budget vetoes:

“Governor Baker’s actions today speak much louder than his words. His healthcare plan would kick 100,000 working parents off of Medicaid and onto insurance plans with less generous coverage and higher out-of-pocket costs, and he’s refusing to approve a bipartisan employer assessment to help pay for MassHealth unless he gets his way,” said Massachusetts Democratic Party Chair Gus Bickford. “Governor Baker is doing the exact same thing as his Republican colleagues in Washington—cruelly stripping healthcare from the most vulnerable and calling it ‘reform.’”

Background
Today, as Governor Baker signed the state’s FY18 budget, he vetoed $222 million from MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, and “returned to the Legislature a new assessment on employers that he initially proposed to help pay for growing MassHealth expenses, calling on lawmakers to act quickly to package the $200 million in new employer fees with MassHealth reforms that lawmakers laid aside during budget deliberations.”

Baker’s MassHealth plan “would allow the administration to shift about 140,000 adults, including 100,000 parents, from MassHealth to commercial insurance plans on the state Health Connector. The state and federal governments would subsidize their premiums, but the policies would have less generous coverage and higher out-of-pocket costs.” When it was released last month, advocates said the plan would hurt low-income working parents and working families who can’t afford to pay premiums, and that “the administration appears to be pulling back provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act that expanded Medicaid coverage to more adults [as] Republicans in Congress are seeking to dismantle it.”

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