Prescription Drugs

Please also see our complete March HAN meeting notes. In this section of the agenda, HAN members discussed helping clients navigate budget cuts and processing delays, outreach strategies that are working, and what to do about a recent glitch at MassHealth.

Please also see our complete March HAN meeting notes. In this section of the agenda, HAN members discussed concerns for elders, people with disabilities, and an increasing number of unemployed people during budget-crunching times—and helping clients through an often-delayed system.

This month, outreach workers were gratified to hear that the importance of their work is being recognized nationally – in a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report on effective ways to enroll and retain children in the Children's Health Insurance Program, and in the CHIP reauthorization legislation itself – but at the same time they are struggling with funding cuts to their own programs and those they work with.

The economic downtown shaped the conversation at our Boston HAN meeting on November 13, as it had in Amherst the week before. Outreach workers reported a big increase in new applicants; they’re also hoping that an incoming Obama administration might make it easier for some of them to get into the system.

The economic downturn shaped a lot of our discussion – how it affects clients, state services, and our own organizations. For example, more clients find themselves in tears during appointments – some with problems like home foreclosure that outreach workers just can’t help fix. Many HAN organizations are taking on additional responsibilities with fewer staff. CP has also cut back staffing; we are now closed on Wednesdays.