Massachusetts Disability Commission Hears Call to Pass Long-Stalled Healthcare Bias Bill

BOSTON — May 18, 2026 — Massachusetts disability advocates urge passage of Senate Bill 869 to ban healthcare discrimination against people with disabilities. Colin Killick, Executive Director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and former head of the Disability Policy Consortium, told the Permanent Commission on the Status of Persons with Disabilities' Long Term Services and Supports Subcommittee on May 18 that the state's COVID-era crisis standards of care initially allowed triage committees to deprioritize patients based on predicted long-term life expectancy — without any representation from disability groups. Killick described a multi-year campaign by DPC, the Disability Law Center, and the Center for Public Representation that forced three successive revisions to those standards before people with disabilities were seated on the drafting committee. S 869, sponsored by Senator Adam Gomez, has cleared the Senate Healthcare Financing Committee this session; Killick said its path to passage is blocked not by active opposition but by a failure of legislative prioritization. He also warned that proposed federal Medicaid cuts to home and community-based services represent "the same choice that state policymakers made at the height of the pandemic" when they drafted discriminatory crisis standards.