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Senate adopts $2.5 million amendment for community health center support
Summary
The Massachusetts Senate adopted amendment 49 to a supplemental budget, allocating $2.5 million to the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers to support community-based clinics facing closures, staffing losses and federal funding threats.
Senator Liz Miranda, the senator from Suffolk, urged the Senate to adopt amendment 49, which directs $2,500,000 of a $35,000,000 supplemental budget to the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers; the Senate agreed and adopted the amendment by voice vote.
Miranda told colleagues the funds would help community health centers respond to “emerging challenges” and an evolving health-care landscape. She said neighborhoods in the Second Suffolk District are seeing pharmacy closures and “health care deserts,” and warned that cuts at the federal level — particularly to Medicaid — threaten services. “The infrastructure our communities have relied on for generations… is eroding,” she said.
The senator listed services she said would be affected if federal funding were reduced, including hospital stays, prescription medications, mental health counseling, substance-use treatment, in-home care for seniors, and services for developmental disabilities. She said roughly 245,000 Boston-area residents rely on community health centers for primary, dental, behavioral and maternal care, and that “over 42 percent of those individuals are on MassHealth.”
Senator Miranda framed the amendment as both a short-term backstop and a statement of state policy: Massachusetts should continue to invest in “community based, culturally competent, and accessible care,” she said. The Clerk read the amendment before the speech; the amendment was adopted on the Senate floor by voice vote.
The funding is part of a larger supplemental spending package before the chamber; the amendment’s $2.5 million allocation comes from that supplemental total of $35 million.
Less central details discussed during debate included the possible effects on specific services (prenatal and chronic care, behavioral health and dental care) and the risks posed to centers that rely heavily on MassHealth reimbursements. The Senate adopted the amendment and moved on to other items in the supplemental budget.
The Senate’s adoption does not itself create new statutory entitlement or change federal Medicaid rules; it allocates state supplemental funds to a nonprofit intermediary that supports community health centers.
