Healey says Mass. will ensure access to vaccines

Starting today, Massachusetts will require insurance companies to cover vaccinations for all state residents, no matter what the Trump administration recommends, Gov. Maura T. Healey said yesterday.

In a defiant news conference at the State House, the Democratic governor laced into U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accusing him of spreading misinformation, and the Trump administration of playing politics, with a critical matter of public health.

“We are taking a stand. We are a health care leader, and we’re not going to let the Trump administration or Robert Kennedy cost lives and take us down when others fail to do their job,” Healey said.

Healey’s office rolled out a three-pronged strategy on Thursday that also includes allowing pharmacists to administer the COVID-19 vaccine, irrespective of government guidance.

Last week, major pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens announced they would no longer offer the COVID-19 jab in a dozen states, including Massachusetts, after the federal government stopped recommending them for adults

Dr. Robbie Goldstein, the state’s public health commissioner, issued a standing order allowing pharmacists to administer the COVID-19 vaccines to state residents aged 5 and older. Children younger than 5 will receive the vaccinations from their physicians.

On Thursday, the state Department of Public Health also updated its vaccine administration policy to allow Goldstein — and his eventual successors — to determine which routine vaccines pharmacists can administer, sidestepping a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel, the administration said.

The state also is entering into a partnership with other New England and Northeastern states on vaccines and other public health issues as the federal government charts a different course, she said.

That multi-state partnership is “focused on developing evidence-based recommendations on vaccinations, disease surveillance, emergency preparedness and supporting state public health labs,” Healey’s office said.

“We are pushing forward with regionalization, a collaboration across the Northeast,” Goldstein elaborated during that State House news conference.

“Because you shouldn’t have different recommendations if you live in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts,” he continued. “And so we’re committed, as regional public health [officials] to come out with unified recommendations about who’s eligible for a COVID vaccine.”

The Democratic governor made her announcement flanked by a battery of physicians, public health experts and advocates and insurers.

It also came the same day that Kennedy, the son of the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and nephew of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was filleted by lawmakers on Capitol Hill over unrest at the CDC and his approach to vaccines.

Some of the questioning by the Senate Finance Committee came from Republican senators who had initially backed Kennedy as the nation’s top public health official.

For them, Healey had a terse rejoinder.

“Shame on you,” she said.

In Boston on Thursday, Healey also harshly criticized Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who issued an order Wednesday rendering the Sunshine State the first U.S. state to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who announced the decision, cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as “immoral” intrusions on people’s rights that hamper parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children, The Associated Press reported.

“People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,” Ladapo, who has frequently clashed with the medical establishment, said at a news conference in Valrico. “They don’t have the right to tell you what to put in your body. Take it away from them.”

Healey sharply disagreed.

“I don’t think measles was a souvenir that you were looking to return with after a trip to Disney World,” Healey said.

“It blows my mind,” she continued. “I can’t imagine, as a governor, ever doing something like Ron DeSantis did.”