Health Announce: July 22, 2025
Topics for this week's Health Announce:
- Health Care Working Group Meeting Tomorrow (July 23) at 3pm
- Rally for the 35th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act Tomorrow (July 23) at 12pm
- Attorney General Campbell Joins Lawsuit Challenging HHS Notice
- CMS Enters Agreement to Share Medicaid Data with DHS
- Change to SCO Plans- Must be Enrolled in Medicare
Sometimes there just isn't much to say to temper the abundance of bad news out there. So in the off-beat spirit of balancing this heavy email with some lighthearted, silly news, we bring you this story about the heated campaign for Cat Mayor of the bike path in Somerville.
1. Health Care Working Group Meeting Tomorrow (July 23) at 3pm
Join us for our July Health Care Working Group meeting at 3pm tomorrow. Unfortunately, there’s much to discuss since our last meeting, most obvious of which is the federal Reconciliation Act (HR1) and its devastating cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and APTCs. We’ll be discussing the changes with the earliest implementation dates, with a focus on the January 1, 2026 elimination of subsidized Marketplace coverage for lawfully present immigrants with incomes under 100% FPL (ConnectorCare Plan Type 1), which currently covers 33,000 people in Massachusetts.
We’ll also discuss MassHealth’s proposed regulations (see here and here - comment deadline of this Friday), the latest on the disturbing HHS notice redefining “federal public benefits”, MassHealth’s ongoing Medicare enrollment project, and CMS’ agreement to share the Medicaid data of all 79 million Medicaid recipients nationwide with the Department of Homeland Security.
Zoom link for the meeting
2. Rally for the 35th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act Tomorrow (July 23) at 12pm
Join the Boston Center for Independent Living, the Boston Commission for Persons with Disabilities, and the disability community for a rally at City Hall Plaza at 12pm tomorrow (July 23), followed by a march to The Embrace on Boston Common. Click here for more information.
3. Attorney General Campbell Joins Lawsuit Challenging HHS Notice
Yesterday, the Attorney General’s Office joined 20 other attorneys general in suing the Trump Administration to stop it from restricting immigrant access to critical health, education, and social service programs, including care at Community Health Centers. Read the AGO’s press release here, and the Globe article here.
This lawsuit is brought in response to notices published by several federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services - published last week- which redefine “federal public benefits”, cutting access to critical services for undocumented and many lawfully residing immigrants. See this explainer from Protecting Immigrant Families for a summary of the HHS notice, as well as tables of services and populations impacted, and this summary from the National Immigration Law Center of all the similar agency notices.
4. CMS Enters Agreement to Share Medicaid Data with DHS
Last week, the Associated Press broke a story about a not-yet-publicly-released agreement that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) entered into with the Department of Homeland Security to hand over the personal Medicaid data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, in an effort to aid the administration’s cruel deportation efforts.
This news follows the administration's more targeted efforts to obtain Medicaid data from certain states that offer state-funded Medicaid coverage to undocumented immigrants, including California. In response to that effort, 20 states led by California, including Massachusetts, joined to sue the Trump administration on July 1, asking the court to stop CMS from sharing Medicaid data with any other federal agency, and to stop any agency from using the data for immigration enforcement.
5. Change to SCO Plans- Must Be Enrolled in Medicare
Currently, MassHealth members can enroll in a SCO (Senior Care Options) Plan, a comprehensive managed care plan for people 65 and over, whether they are enrolled in Medicare or not. However, MassHealth is going to start requiring SCO Plan members to be enrolled in Medicare, as part of MassHealth’s planned initiatives to save costs that were announced with the Healey Administration’s proposed FY26 budget in January of this year.
Yesterday, MassHealth issued a bulletin on this change, stating that effective August 1, 2025, SCO Plans will no longer accept new enrollments for Medicaid-only members. The bulletin also states that effective January 1, 2026, MassHealth will disenroll existing members without Medicare from their SCO Plans and enroll them in MassHealth fee-for-service. MassHealth plans to send two notices to Medicaid-only SCO enrollees about this change- the first 90 days prior to Jan 1 (October 1), and the second 30 days prior to Jan 1 (Dec 1).