[MUSIC PLAYING]
[INAUDIBLE]
Mr. Kafker of Sharon, doubts the presence of a quorum.
The Chair can ascertain that a quorum is not present.
Court officers will summons the members
and tell them that a quorum roll call is in progress
and will remain open for three minutes.
Chair would like to recognize some visitors
that we have in the chamber today
to the right of the rostrum.
First of all, we have visitors from Springfield.
Guests of Representatives Gonzalez, Williams, and Tosado.
Please welcome the Association of Black Business
and Professionals, City Councilor Marcus Williams,
and City Clerk Anthony Wilson.
Welcome to the State House.
And we're also pleased to have with us here today
the father of representative Nick Collins,
former Representative Jim Collins, who is here also
with former representative Royal Bolling Jr. Welcome.
Have all members voted?
Mr. Kafker moves that the request for a quorum roll
call be withdrawn.
The chair objection, the chair has none.
[POUNDS GAVEL]
Members will please take their seats.
Members will please take their seats
and subdue their conversations.
Members will please take their seats
and subdue their conversations.
I'm very proud to welcome everyone to this historic House
Chamber for this Black History Month
commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of WEB
Du Bois.
I would also like to thank Representative Pignatelli
and the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus
for sponsoring this event and for their work to recognize
this important milestone.
We also have some special guests,
some of our friends from the Senate here today,
who I also would like to welcome.
Please welcome Senate President, Hariette Chandler.
Senator Sonya Chang-Diaz, and Senator Joseph Boncore.
Massachusetts has been at the forefront of so many fights
for freedom.
Whether it was leading the charge
for American independence from Britain,
advancing the cause of abolition or women's rights,
our state has been at the forefront.
In the years past, national and international leaders,
such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King
have spoken from this very podium.
And just across the street, every year, many of us
join together to read Frederick Douglass' famous speech
on Independence Day.
We do this directly below the memorial to the 54th regiment,
in which African-American soldiers took
the fight against slavery directly to the Confederacy.
Today we gather to recognize the life and achievements of WEB Du
Bois.
He was born in Great Barrington and attended
the local Congregational Church.
Recognizing his brilliance, the church
banded together to support his education.
By age 15, he was already submitting articles
to newspapers on race relations, and following his attendance
at Fisk University, he returned to Massachusetts
to receive his bachelor's, master's, and PhD.
Massachusetts celebrates its ties to Dr. Du Bois.
The main library at the University of Massachusetts
in Amherst is named for him.
The story of how Dr. Randolph Bromery of UMass
obtained the Du Bois papers for the university
and retrieved them from Egypt has
the feel of real page-turner.
Today we will hear from Representative Pignatelli, who
represents Du Bois' hometown of Great Barrington,
as well as members of our Black and Latino Legislative Caucus,
and David Levering Lewis, his noted biographer.
So I thank all of you for coming here today.
The chair would like to now recognize the gentleman
from Lawrence, representative Moran, to give remarks.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
And through you to the members, I proudly
rise today on the last day of Black History
Month as the chair of the Massachusetts Black and Latino
Legislative Caucus.
My colleagues and I within the caucus
are humbled by the opportunity and challenges
of ensuring the voices of people of color across Massachusetts
are heard and represented.
This is not a task we take lightly,
and I appreciate the tireless work
being done by our many allies and colleagues
in helping us to achieve this goal.
Black History Month is a chance to not only highlight
and celebrate the tremendous achievement
of the black community for us but also
to redouble our efforts and focus on the challenges
ahead for all people of color.
Heroic African-American figures have risen out
of triumphing at events such as the Revolutionary
War and the Civil Rights Movement,
but also during some of the nation's darkest periods,
like the Civil War and the fight to abolish
slavery in this country once and for all.
We thank these leaders not just today or even this month,
but rather all year long as they play a central role
in moving this country forward.
Black History Month gives us an opportunity
to put a special spotlight on the countless sacrifices made
by civil rights pioneers, including
Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King
Jr, and Rosa Parks.
Today I introduce my good friend, my colleague, Rep
Pignatelli, who will highlight one of Massachusetts'
very own civil rights pioneer.
And want to thank you all.
I thank you.
And have a happy Black History Month.
Thank you.
Thank you, Frankie, and thank you
for making me an honorary member of the Black and Latino Caucus.
Thank you Mr. Speaker, for allowing us to be here today,
and thank all of you for allowing
us to do what's going to be a very busy day for all of us.
I'd like to give a shout out to the folks
from the Berkshires, who trekked down here to be here today.
Thank you very much for being here.
The Speaker always thinks I'm joking
when I tell him it takes me three hours to get here.
So thank you very much for making that trek.
And Frankie, thank you so much, for not only
being a great friend, but for partnering
on this adventure this month to recognize Black History Month.
And I'm really humbled and honored to be here.
WEB Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868,
near a golden river in the Golden West of Massachusetts,
Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which all year long will
be celebrating the 150th anniversary of WEB Du Bois'
birth.
I'm so honored and humbled to be from Du Bois' district
and so honored to be able to bring the life and legacy of Du
Bois to this historic chamber.
Our main speaker today is Dr. David Levering Lewis,
a prominent American historian with a special focus
on 20th century United States social history
and civil rights.
Dr. Lewis graduated from Du Bois' alma mater,
Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee.
He received his master's in history from Columbia
University and earned his PhD in modern European and French
history from the London School of Economics.
He's lectured at the University of Ghana,
taught at the University of Notre Dame, Howard University,
Morgan University, and the University
of the District of Columbia.
From 1985 to 2003, he served as a Martin Luther King Jr.
Professor of History at Rutgers University.
Dr. Lewis has authored eight books.
Part one and part two of his biography
on the life of Du Bois both won the Pulitzer Prize
for biography or autobiography, making
Dr. Lewis the first author to win the Pulitzer
in this category for two successive works
on the same subject.
In his own words, Dr. Lewis has referred to Du Bois as,
and I quote, "the whole ball of wax.
Everything significant about becoming an American."
Unquote.
Dr. Lewis received the 2009 National Humanities Medal
from President Barack Obama for his examinations
on the life of Du Bois.
He is currently teaching as a Julius Silver University
Professor and Professor of History Emeritus
at New York University.
Let's give a nice Massachusetts House of Representatives
welcome to Dr. David Lewis.
This is a scene that is, I think, or would have been not
so many years ago, unexpected.
And it is overwhelmingly meaningful
that it is occurring today.
In this month of emancipators, as we've heard,
Washington, Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass,
we gather together in the people's House
to honor native son, William Edward Burkhardt Du Bois, born
February 23, a Sunday, 150 years ago
on Church Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
The birth certificate reads William E. Du Bois, colored.
Issue of Alfred Du Bois and Mary--
her Burkhardt maiden name was not mentioned--
whose February 5 nuptials in the nearby village of Housatonic
the previous year had been duly noted in the Berkshire Courier.
Alfred Du Bois, a Union Army veteran,
who gave his birth place as Santo Domingo, Haiti,
departed in rather murky circumstances
soon thereafter, leaving wife and newborn in the tenuous care
of Alfred's Burkhardt in-laws.
Du Bois left Great Barrington at age 17,
returning during the following four score
years only infrequently and usually for brief stays.
Memorably, in late May of 1899, when he and his new wife, Nina,
came to bury their baby son Burkhardt.
Then again, in early July, 58 years later, to bury wife Nina.
And again, for the last time, with the remains
of daughter Yolande, before self-exile in Ghana
in October 1961.
The color line was manifest in Great Barrington,
Du Bois has written, and yet not absolutely drawn.
Then he says, "I very early got the idea--"
he would tell an interviewer from Columbia University's
oral history project--
"I got the idea that what I was going to do
was to prove to the world that Negroes were just
like other people."
Yet he sensed early that he was something of a curiosity
among the white townspeople.
With that flair for drama and language
in which he has few equals, Du Bois
pinpoints in the souls of black folk
the exact moment in his 10-year-old life,
a spring day in 1878, when, as he says,
"I remember well when the shadow swept across me.
In a wee wooden school house, something put
into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting cards,
$0.10 a package, and exchange.
The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer,
refused my card.
Refused it peremptorily.
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness
that I was different from the others.
Or like mayhap in heart and life and longing,
but shut out from their world by a vast veil."
In the case of a sweeping shadow and the separating veil,
Du Bois has given several versions.
But what is clear is that he extracted
both his seminal concepts of the divided
self and his powerful metaphor of the veil
from his pubescent Great Barrington years.
In 1880s America, not even the sons of mill owners
and but the rarest daughter took college education
as a matter of course.
Du Bois recalled that maybe two others in his high school
graduating class of 13 were heading for college.
Even his super-charged ambition at first
failed to grasp the value of a college education
might have for a colored man.
That was High School Principal Frank Hosmer's doing.
Hosmer did more.
For the unraveling Burkhardt clan's limited resources
could hardly afford the college course textbooks
on Greek and Latin, algebra and geometry.
Classmate Lewis Rush Russell's mother,
second wife of Farley Russell, a mill owner,
agreed to buy them after Hosmer spoke with her.
There were seven boys and six girls in Willie's June 1884
graduation class.
His mother and other Burkhardts heard him deliver an oration
on Wendell Phillips, the conscience of New England
abolitionism.
It was the success of the evening, the Berkshire Courier
reporter judged, that William E. Du Bois, a colored lad who
has good standing, gave an excellent oration
and provoked repeated applause.
But he was not going to Harvard.
Not even to Williams College.
Money remained the big problem, of course.
But Principal Hosmer arranged for--
as we've heard-- for congregational churches
to pledge $25 each for four years
to underwrite Du Bois' education at Fisk
University, a congregational school for Negroes
in Nashville, Tennessee.
Harvard was not lost.
The thought never occurred to him.
Merely adjourned.
Du Bois was off to Fisk University.
For him, it was a great adventure into the unknown.
His memory of his first dining hall
supper he carried to his grave.
At age 92, he would animatedly tell the Columbia University
Oral History Project interviewer of meeting Lena Horne's aunt.
"She was beautifully dressed.
Oh, a perfectly lovely girl."
No Fisk woman would ever refuse his card because he was black.
Graduating with highest honors after three brilliant years
at Fisk, Great Barrington's Brown Ambassador
entered Harvard College in September of 1888.
Harvard and Yale traditionally required
African-American baccalaureates to repeat
a portion of their undergraduate training
before pursuing graduate degrees, a requirement
frequently imposed on white graduates
of undistinguished colleges.
Helped by a bequest from his mysterious father's father
and a college scholarship, Du Bois
entered Harvard College as a junior,
the sixth of his race to do so.
He graduated magna cum laude with a concentration
in philosophy under William James in the class of 1890.
Remarkably, a special scholarship
permitted matriculation at Germany's premier university,
Friedrich Wilhelm University, where
Du Bois came within months of earning a coveted doctorate
in economics.
He would, however, be the first of his race
to win a Harvard doctorate in 1896.
He haughtily allowed later that it was a consolation
prize for having been denied the few additional months needed
to return to the States with a prized German degree.
His 1896 history dissertation on the suppression of the Atlantic
slave trade to the United States was an immediate classic,
the first history monograph published in Harvard's
new historical series.
The Philadelphia Negro, 1899, was
recognized as a methodological breakthrough
in the social sciences.
But a score of years after departing his birthplace,
William Edward Burkhardt Du Bois, renowned as a scholar
and what today we call a public intellectual,
achieved an unparalleled eminence with the publication
in 1903 of a collection of 14 bombshell essays
that could only be described as sui generis.
The Souls of Black Folk explained
Americans of color to themselves with a saliency that still
inspires and defines today.
The 35-year-old author was the first to grasp
the international implications of the struggle
for racial justice, memorably proclaiming
at the dawn of the century that the problem of the 20th century
would be the problem of the color line.
He was a principal founder of the NAACP, the nation's oldest
civil rights association, created 109 years ago
this month, and whose militant monthly, The Crisis Magazine,
he edited as the voice of uncompromising racial equality
for a quarter century.
No exaggeration to state that a majority
of literate African-American households
were weaned on Du Bois' monthly, even
those beholden to the adversary legacy of Booker Washington.
A Du Bois bibliography runs to 16 pioneering books
of sociology, history, politics, and race relations.
In his 70s, he found time to finish a second autobiography,
the splendid Dusk of Dawn, And to produce
three large historical novels, complementing
the two large works of fiction written in the first two
decades of the 20th century that anticipated
the so-called Harlem Renaissance.
All Americans owe Du Bois a considerable debt
for the historical masterpiece, Black Reconstruction
in America, 1935, which changed forever
our understanding of the shameful suppression
of racial democracy in the post-Civil War South.
The long march from the Supreme Court's Plessy v Ferguson's
separate but equal equivocation in 1896
to Brown v Board's mandate for integration in 1954
would have been even longer and harder
without his mind and pen.
Du Bois cut an amazing swath through four continents.
He institutionalized the Pan-African movement,
was a Lenin Peace Prize Laureate,
and his birthday was once a national holiday in China.
A new edition of The Souls of Black Folk
is forthcoming this month.
Properly so because this book is both timeless while being
also time-bound.
Like the public's immutable memory
of Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech,
so its vivid retention of Du Bois' color line prophesy
has meant that the evolved ideas,
both of Du Bois and King, in their last years,
are forgotten, unknown, deemed subversive,
or all of the above.
We should probably not expect to see
the release of a new edition of In Battle for Peace,
Du Bois' account of his 1952 Justice Department indictment
trial and embarrassed acquittal in Washington
as a foreign agent.
In one of his last jeremiads, before exiling himself
to Ghana, he called for a restoration of democracy
in America.
He said, make it again possible for the people
to express their will.
Today, he said, the rich and the powerful rulers of America
divide themselves into Republicans and Democrats
in order to raise millions of dollars
to buy the next election and prevent you
from having a third party to vote for
or to stop war, theft, and murder by your votes.
Massachusetts born and bred, Du Bois
criticized his country's shortcomings
as much from a youthful Calvinist's intolerance
of moral slothfulness as from an aged
Marxist's impatience with the rigged
outcomes of unregulated capitalism.
Famous at 50, Du Bois often claimed
that his death was practically requested at 75.
He dismissed Brown v Board's all-deliberate speed,
timetable, as fraudulent, and he characteristically
looked upon the ultimate value of citizenship
for people of color in America with the greatest misgivings
if that citizenship were to mean that the peoples of Africa
and Asia were to become subjects under a pox
Americana, maintained for the profit
of the military industrial financial complex.
Martin Luther King Jr. Famously told a capacity Carnegie Hall
audience on the centenary of Du Bois' birth
that it was never possible to know where the scholar Du
Bois ended and the organizer Du Bois began.
The two qualities in him were, said
King, a single, unified force.
History cannot ignore Dr. Du Bois, King insisted.
Yet, when Martin Luther King spoke these words five years
after Du Bois died in Accra, Ghana Du Bois
had been virtually excised from his country's mainstream
narrative as an expatriate and a communist.
Our irrational, obsessive anti-communism
has led us into too many quagmires
to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking,
Dr. King went on to say, and he reminded his audience
that Abraham Lincoln had warmly welcomed the support of Karl
Marx during the Civil War and corresponded with him freely.
The old contrarian's death had come, indeed,
just as Dr. King prepared to deliver his "Dream"
speech from the Lincoln Memorial steps in 1963.
The generational baton had passed that day
with stunning symbolic appropriateness.
Six weeks after his 1968 Carnegie Hall centenary tribute
to Du Bois, Martin Luther King died from a sniper's bullet.
To be sure, Du Bois 20th century problem
was a color line, actually, without color,
for it was starkly black and white.
But our century is on its way to being brown and yellow as well
as black and minority white.
Still, as Du Bois might well have
argued, to concede that a historic racial dyad has
yielded to a polychrome present does not
mean that race has been transcended as a potent force
in our national life.
By the time of his well-timed exit,
Du Bois had repeatedly proclaimed in so many words
that the cash line was the cardinal problem of the age.
The real problem of the century, therefore, he said,
was really the manipulation of race in the service of wealth.
And a clairvoyant Du Bois feared greatly
that the odds increasingly favored
the manipulations of the rich.
Were he with us this afternoon, Du Bois
would almost certainly discern in the shortcomings
of the last US presidential administration
the toxic persistence of race.
In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama
had channeled the e. pluribus unum mythos
of American exceptionalism as seldom
before by a credible public figure.
Not only did he minimize the significance
of political labels, but racism was seen as an old problem
that the candidate's generation could refute and even
move beyond.
Racism, quote, "was subject to refutation,"
Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope,
his ambitious campaign book.
Yet what can now be sadly conceded
is that a redeeming vision of a national post-racial reset
succumbed to the nightmare of worsening disparities
now almost irrevocably color coded
by Supreme Court majorities disingenuously
marking African-American and Latino voting rights
and castrating what's left of organized labor
by a reborn nativism more virulent
than its mid-19th century parents
and by criminal justice system irregularities perceived
as outrageous enough to spark corrective riots.
Paradoxically, the 44th president's game endeavor
to bypass those dilemmas of race, ethnicity, and wealth
exposed in Du Bois' foundational text ended by delivering
a confused democracy to a racist oligarchy
presided over by a narcissistic aberration.
The vital center did not hold, and the angry fringe
prevailed November 2016.
In his long, turbulent career, great Barrington's native son
attempted virtually every possible solution
to the problem of racism.
First had come culture and education
for the elites, then the ballot for the masses, then
economic democracy.
And decade by decade, finally, all these solutions
in the service of global racial parity and economic justice.
No doubt he was precipitous in totally writing off
the market economy.
Even so, it may be suggested that Du Bois was
right to insist that to leave the solution
of systemic social problems exclusively to the market
is an agenda guaranteeing obscene economic inequality
in the short run and inescapable political gridlock
and confusion in the long run.
Du Bois intended that his life would exemplify
the American race problem.
Shortly before his death, he confessed
that but for the race problem, he might have become,
he said, an unquestioning worshipper
in the shrine of the established social order
into which I was born.
But just that part of this order which
seemed to most of my fellows nearest perfection
seemed to me most inequitable and wrong.
And starting from that critique, I gradually,
as the years went by, found other things to question.
In contrast to the political profile of most lives then,
Du Bois, at age 95, was more radically reformist
than virtually any other engaged intellectual, black or white,
of the 20th century.
150 years late, as the inspiring month-long embrace
by the citizens of Representative Pignatelli's
Great Barrington, and this most significant
legislative sesquicentennial homage attest,
surely it is time both to comprehend
the flaws of William Edward Burkhardt Du Bois
and to prize his genius.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Professor Lewis.
First let me say how grateful we all
are at the participation of University
of Massachusetts Amherst, along with the UMass Amherst
libraries, in this commemoration of WEB Du Bois
and the 150th anniversary of his birth.
As you know, the WEB Du Bois papers
are housed at UMass in Amherst.
They, the library, have lent to the State House
an exhibit highlighting the life and work of WEB Du Bois, which
has been here this month on the fourth floor
and has been brought down to be mounted immediately
outside the chamber for this event today.
We also thank the WEB Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst
and the University of Massachusetts Press
for giving each of us legislators,
which should, if they have not arrived yet,
will be arriving in days, a copy of their new edition of WEB Du
Bois' most celebrated work, The Souls of Black Folk.
We now end these moments together
with doing something that is traditional
in black communities since 1900, and that
is singing the hymn, "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
These words were written by James Weldon Johnson.
Johnson was a lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, novelist and poet,
and civil rights activist, a contemporary--
although in his shortened life--
of WEB Du Bois and was the first African-American Executive
Secretary of the NAACP.
In 1900, at the age of 29, 35 years
after the end of slavery in this nation, James Weldon
Johnson and his brother Rosamond wrote the music to this hymn,
were teachers at Stanton School, a segregated school
in Jacksonville, Florida, where James Weldon Johnson
had been born.
And they had gathered the students
for a special celebration.
And that special celebration was to celebrate
the birthday of Abraham Lincoln on February 12, 1900.
If you can imagine, this was the end of Reconstruction.
And so about the only people in the Deep South
who celebrated Abraham Lincoln's birthday
were African-Americans.
And these two brothers had invited a great--
for them-- African-American educator to come and speak
to their students.
And they wrote this song as an introduction
that the 500 students at this segregated school
could sing in welcoming Booker T. Washington to the school
to speak.
In his autobiography, Along This Way,
years later, Johnson wrote about these words and this tune that
had spread throughout the black communities of America
and become known as the Negro national anthem.
And he wrote, when we remark how remarkable that popularity was,
and the only comment we can make is that we wrote better
than we knew.
One final connection to Great Barrington.
James Weldon Johnson and his wife,
Grace Neil, at the height of his popularity,
decided to buy a summer home in Great Barrington in 1926.
And it is there where much of James Weldon Johnson's work
was composed.
In a house with a writing cabin that exists
today, called Five Acres on Alfred Road.
And so to lead us--
and I mean us--
in the singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing,"
we are so happy to have the choir director
from St. Mark Congregational Church, Adam Littlejohn,
with us today.
And so that we will follow the tradition that those of you who
have been to these events of the black community
know till today, we will all stand
for the singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
Is this on?
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Good afternoon.
Today you all are going to be a choir.
And I'm going to direct you in the song,
"Lift Every Voice and Sing."
On the first verse, I'm going to sing it for you,
so you have the melody.
And then on the second and the last verse,
we'll all sing it together.
(SINGING) Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven
ring.
Ring with the harmonies of liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies.
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past
has taught us.
Sing a song full of the hope that the present
has brought us.
Facing the rising sun our new day begun.
Let us march on till victory is won.
Let's all try the second and the last verse.
Ready?
And--
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod
felt in the days when hope unborn had died.
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears have been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood
of the slaughtered.
Out from the gloomy past, till now
we stand at last where the white gleam of our bright star
is cast.
God of our weary years, god of our silent tears.
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way,
thou who has by thy might led us into the light.
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places of God
where we met thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world
we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand, true to our God,
true to our native land.
Not bad.
[LAUGHTER]
There will be a reception if people
have a moment to greet our speaker next door in room 350.
Thank you very much.
Report of committee.
The Committee on Rules reports recommending
that the resolutions filed by Mr. Pignatelli of [INAUDIBLE]
and other members of the House, commemorating
the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Edward
Burkhardt Du Bois.
Committee on Rules reports recommending their resolutions
ought to be adopted.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Mr. Pignatelli of Lee moves suspension of the rules.
All those in favor, say aye.
Opposed, no.
The ayes have it.
The rules are suspended.
Question comes on adoption of the resolutions.
All those in favor, say aye.
Opposed, no.
The ayes have it.
The resolutions are adopted.
House will be in a brief recess.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[POUNDS GAVEL]
House will be in order.
Chair has been informed that Senate 2296 has
been released by the Committee on Bills on third reading.
Miss Hogan of Stow now moves suspension of the rules.
All those in favor, say aye, all those opposed, nay.
The ayes have it.
Rules are suspended.
Third reading of the bill.
An act to protect the confidential health care,
Senate number 2296 amended.
Question now is on passing the bill to being gross.
Chair recognizes Miss Hogan of Stow.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and through you to the members.
I rise today in support of Senate bill 2296,
an act to protect access to confidential health care.
This bill, commonly referred to as the Patch Act,
will close a loophole in health care privacy laws
that allow sensitive health information to be inadvertently
shared with the primary subscriber of a health plan.
The loophole is this.
As the primary subscriber of a health plan,
you cannot call a doctor or a hospital to obtain specific
information about the care of your spouse or adult child
that's on your health plan.
HIPAA laws would not allow that doctor
to release that information to you.
However, that information is sent to you
in a summary of payments or better known
as an explanation of benefits after the fact.
This bill aims to protect patient privacy
by closing that loophole and creating methods
by which patients can obtain their own summary of payments
form.
[POUNDS GAVEL]
Chair is-- what purpose did the lady rise?
Chair can ascertain that.
Chair will respectfully ask the members
to please take their seats, subdue their conversation.
Court officers clear the back of the chamber.
Please take your seats.
Chair recognizes Mr. Hogan of Stow.
This bill does not change the way in which people
can access or consent to care.
It only closes a loophole in division
of insurance regulations.
This bill does not change Massachusetts' minor consent
laws, nor does it change parents' access to information
about their minor child's health care in any way.
This bill in no way changes the circumstances
under which minors may consent to their own health care
without the consent of a parent or legal guardian.
Currently, when a patient seeks medical care,
there is a form called a summary of payments or explanation
of benefits which details the type and costs of services
received.
This form is typically sent to the primary subscriber
of the health plan.
Sensitive health information is frequently
disclosed in an SOP or Summary of Payments explanation
of benefits, violating the basic right to privacy guaranteed
by HIPAA for anyone enrolled as a dependent on another person's
policy.
The disclosure of confidential health information
affects all people, but particularly adult spouses
covered as dependents on a partner's
plan and young adults, 18 to 26, who
are insured on their parent's or guardian's plan.
We know that maintaining confidentiality
is critically important for patients seeking
care related to sexual and reproductive health,
domestic violence or sexual assault,
and mental health or substance abuse disorders.
We also know that the failure to obtain care
has serious consequences, such as unplanned pregnancies,
delayed access to prenatal care, the spread of STIs,
deteriorating mental health conditions, and continued
substance abuse.
There are situations where a patient fears disclosure
of care to an abusive partner or disclosure of family planning
services to a parent.
And that fear may deter them from seeking care
altogether, leading to higher health costs down the road.
Such fear may also prevent a patient
from sharing with their doctor the context or causes
of the health conditions for which they are seeking
treatment, opening the door for incorrect diagnosis
and missed opportunities for prevention and treatment.
The Patch Act will address the problems
many patients face by closing this loophole
in confidentiality.
Specifically, the bill will allow patients
to choose their preferred method of receiving an SOP,
and that will not be necessary every time you access care.
This changes how you receive the SOP.
It will eliminate a summary of payments
when no remaining balance exists on a claim.
It will require that a summary of payment
would provide generic information only,
such as office visit or medical care.
It would also ensure that patients
are informed of their options to request
confidential means of receiving an SOP,
and it would require the Division of Insurance
and the Department of Public Health
to educate providers and patients on these protections.
This policy is so critical that in April of 2017,
the Massachusetts Division of insurance
issued a bulletin which required Mass DOI to develop
a common summary of payment form by which commercial health
insurers, Blue Cross Blue Shield, health maintenance
organizations, be issued at the member level
rather than to the primary subscriber of the health plan.
And it could be issued via paper or electronic means.
Carriers-- and that's important to understand--
carriers were required to come into compliance
with this bulletin February of this year, which is this month.
The bill before you today would codify this important policy
into state law.
So we're taking the Mass Division of Insurance policy
and codifying it today.
Establishing and ensuring a new level of confidentiality
will alleviate patients' fear of being punished or stigmatized
for the health care decisions they make.
Most importantly, it will empower
patients to take control of their care
and hopefully lead to better health
outcomes for our commonwealth.
Closing this loophole-- and it is
a loophole is important-- to the essential patient privacy.
I would like to thank the 105 legislators who
have co-sponsored this bill, believing that patient
confidentiality is the cornerstone
of an effective health care system.
I would like to thank the Senate sponsor,
the gentlelady from Ashland, for her leadership on this issue.
The gentlelady from Swansea for her abiding support
of this bill.
I would also like to thank the dozens of providers
and advocates and community-based organizations
that make up the Patch Alliance, and in particular, Planned
Parenthood Advocacy Fund, Health Care For All, as well as Patch
Supporters Blue Cross Blue Shield
and the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans.
Your dedication and advocacy during the past several years
have been instrumental in bringing this bill forward
to the finish line.
And Mr. Speaker, I ask that when a vote be taken,
it be taken by a call of the yeas and nays.
Thank you.
Miss Hogan of Stow asked when the matter
is taken, it be taken by a call of the yeas and nays.
Those joining with her will rise,
and monitors return the count.
First division, five.
Second division, 13.
Third division.
Sufficient number have arisen, when the matter is taken,
it will be taken by a call of the yeas and nays.
The question now is on passing the bill to being gross,
pending Miss Orrall of Lakeville offers an amendment
in the hands of the clerk.
The clerk will read the amendment.
Amendment number four.
Miss Orrall of Lakeville moves to amend the bill by inserting
the following new section.
Nothing in this act shall supersede
any general or special law related to the informed
consent of minors.
Question now is on the amendment.
All those in favor, say aye.
All those opposed, nay.
The ayes have it.
The amendment is adopted.
Question now is on passing the bill to being gross, pending
which Mr. Lombardo of Bellerica offers
an amendment in the hands of the clerk.
The clerk will read the amendment.
Amendment number five.
Mr. Lombardo of Bellerica moves to amend the bill
by inserting text of chapter 176-O, section 27,
paragraph E, lines 39 to 45.
If there be no objection, the clerk
will dispense with reading the paper.
Chair hears none.
The question is on the amendment.
All those in favor, say aye, all those opposed, nay.
The nays have it.
The amendment is not adopted.
Question now is on--
question now is on engrossment.
Roll call having been ordered.
The roll call machine is now open and will remain open
for three minutes.
Court officers summon the members.
Indicate a roll call is in progress.
The House will be in order.
The clerk will make an announcement.
The voting stations for representatives Kahn, Miceli,
and Chris Walsh are locked.
[POUNDS GAVEL]
House will be in order.
Chair would like to take this opportunity
to introduce, to the right of the rostrum, Dominican Republic
Delegation from the Chamber of Accounts.
Doctor Hugo Alvarez Perez, President of the Chamber,
Carlos Diaz, Secretary of the Chamber of Accounts.
Attorney Jesus de La Cruz, Communications Director,
attorney Carlin Sosa, Administrator
of Finance, attorney Margarita [? Corcoran, ?]
member of the Chamber of Accounts and [INAUDIBLE]
Assessor of Membership.
And they're the guests of Representative Frank Moran.
Welcome to the House of Representatives.
Have all members voted who wish to do so?
Time for voting has expired.
The clerk will display the tally.
On this matter, 138 members voted in the affirmative, 14
in the negative.
The bill is passed to be engrossed.
House will be in a brief recess.
Mr. Homer of Boston asks unanimous consent
to be recorded in the last roll call.
Does the chair object?
Chair has none.
On roll call number 313, Russell Holmes.
Yes?
[POUNDS GAVEL]
Members will please take their seats.
As we continue to grieve for Chairman Kocot
and celebrate his life and his immense contributions
to the Commonwealth, I ask that we now honor our good friend
with a moment of silence.
Thank you.
House will be in a brief recess.
Mr. Mariano, Quincy, offers an order in the hands
the clerk, which the clerk will read.
Order that when the House adjourns today,
it will adjourn and meet tomorrow at 11 o'clock AM.
Question comes to adoption of the order.
All those in favor, say aye.
Opposed no.
The ayes have it.
The order is adopted.
Speaker DeLeo of Winthrop moves that when the House adjourns
today, it do so in respect of the memory of Peter V.
Kocot, a member of the House from Northampton from 2002
to 2018 inclusive.
Question comes on that motion.
All those in favor, say aye.
Opposed no.
The ayes have it.
Mr. Hill of Ipswich now moves that the House do now adjourn,
to meet Thursday next at 11 AM in an informal session.
Question comes on that motion.
All those in favor, say aye.
Opposed, no.
The ayes have it.
The motion is adopted.
The House now stands adjourned to meet tomorrow
at 11 AM in an informal session.
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