Last month, NoHLA shared legislative updates from the end of the 2021 state legislative session. We celebrated big wins for health equity this session as the Legislature responded to the challenge of existing health disparities exacerbated by the pandemic. We were heartened to see investment in immigrant care, postpartum coverage, and more affordable premiums, among other priorities. 

But the work was not over. As in every session, NoHLA stuck it through to the end, monitoring final post-session action by Governor Inslee. Here are final summaries of enacted bills and biennial operating budget provisions that relate to health care access. 

With very few exceptions, such as the veto of a COVID data privacy bill, the Governor signed the health-related bills NoHLA was monitoring. The Governor also approved the health items in the final budget, with one notable exception: the Governor vetoed a section of the budget which directed the state Office of Financial Management (OFM) to allocate nearly $143M in remaining enhanced federal matching funds toward Medicaid Home and Community Based Services (see for background). The biennial budget allocated some of these new federal HCBS funds, but didn’t allocate all of the federally-available dollars, instead giving this responsibility to OFM in the interim. When the federal government subsequently extended the deadline for spending the money to 2024, the Governor indicated that the Legislature should make the remaining funding allocations in next session’s supplemental budget instead. As this process develops, NoHLA will continue to be engaged in providing feedback about ways to use the funding to improve community-based long-term care services.