Happy New Year Updates

Beginning today, fares for RIDE users are reduced from $4 to $3.  This is great news for the tens of thousands of RIDE users whose fares doubled last summer – from $2 to $4 per trip. Meanwhile, the fares for regular bus and light rail service increased by an average of "only" 23%. 

When fares went up in 2012, the legislature directed Elder Affairs and the Massachusetts Office on Disability (MOD) to report on the impacts of the increase.  The results were alarming.  Over 60% of RIDE users reported taking fewer transit trips and a majority of RIDE users with monthly incomes below $2,000 reported cutting back on food and personal grooming. 

Mass Senior Action held many protests and sit-ins against the fare hikes.  As co-chairs of the MBTA Caucus, Rep. Sean Garballey and I hosted a briefing on the report, where legislators asked the MBTA to consider the outsized impact that the fare hikes had on seniors and people with disabilities.

And the MBTA listened!

Along with many constituents, I was concerned when the MBTA required anyone wanting to use the RIDE to go to Charlestown to be personally screened for eligibility.  So in October, my staff and I visited the Eligibility Center and were extremely impressed with the efforts of Marilyn Cole and her staff to make sure applicants have a positive experience, from providing free RIDEs to the Center, to ensuring quick responses to all calls, and accommodations for individual needs.  If you're interested, watch this video.

Again this year, tens of thousands of MA residents got rebates on their health insurance, totalling tens of millions of dollars, thanks to both the federal Affordable Care Act and a Massachusetts law which incorporated my "care share" bill.  The law requires insurers to spend at least 88% of their premiums on actual medical care ("medical loss ratio") rather than administration and marketing.   (Thanks to BU's Dr. Alan Sager and Debbie Socolar for this important idea.) 

This year I got a refund of $22.90.  More important than that little amount is that insurance companies can no longer spend more than 12% of our money on administrative expenses.

Students can't enroll in Massachusetts colleges unless they have health insurance.  Many were forced to buy expensive and inferior insurance.  But the Globe reported this week that the state can no longer exclude from subsidized programs those who can get insurance elsewhere, including college students.  Suzanne Curry of Health Care For All added that the law’s Medicaid expansion means that young people won’t lose MassHealth at age 19.

In 2004 my bill to allow compensation for wrongfully convicted people passed.  At the time, the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition wrote that "Massachusetts (and Suffolk County in particular) has an astonishing record of erroneous convictions surpassed only by Illinois (and most famously Chicago)."

I just received a report on the 23 cases where men have received compensation for up to 22 years of imprisonment, giving them at least some relief for their years of lost freedom. 

You can read about some of these cases on the New England Innocence Project website.