Amendment #33 - Ensuring Access to Mental Health Services
Therapy Matcher, filed by Rep. Balser
Residents of Massachusetts struggle to find a social worker during some of the most difficult moments in their life. Whether they are grappling with substance use disorder, mental illness, or situational anxiety or depression. This lack of access has been well documented in numerous recent reports. Therapy Matcher is a free public service available to all consumers in Massachusetts connecting people to qualified social workers in their community who accept their insurance and specialize in the consumer’s area of need. The state has an important role to play in ensuring residents have access to behavioral health services. Offsetting the cost of Therapy Matcher will allow the service to continue and to bring more social workers into the network.
Amendment #140 - Closing the SNAP Gap, filed by Rep. Livingstone
Closing the "SNAP Gap” would help solve our ever-increasing food insecurity problem (as reported in Thursday's Globe). This amendment is not asking for additional money, but is asking EOHHS to use funds previously allocated in the House's FY21 budget to be used to close the SNAP Gap. Closing the SNAP Gap would streamline the application processes for MassHealth and SNAP, reducing the administrative burden (and costs associated with processing 2 separate but very similar applications) of applying for these critically important programs while increasing the number of SNAP dollars, a fully federally funded program, into our local economies.
Amendment #759 - Improved Access to Healthcare, filed by Chair Cronin
This amendment, based on the ROE Act, would improve reproductive freedom in Massachusetts and access to health care by improving access to abortion later in pregnancy, after 24 weeks, in the case of a lethal fetal anomaly and improving access to abortion care for young people who are 16 and 17 years old by removing the judicial bypass process which currently requires them to go before a judge in order to access an abortion.
