Gov. Deval Patrick called for contained healthcare costs, modified prison sentences and more unified community colleges in his State of the Commonwealth address on Monday.
“Nearly a year ago, after lots of studying and broad consultation, I asked you to act on a plan to control the rising costs of healthcare,” Patrick said, adding that spending on healthcare in Massachusetts has doubled in the last decade.
Patrick said the average premium increase was 16.3 percent two years ago and today it is 2.3 percent, but that is not enough.
“Too many small businesses and too many working families still go through an annual ritual that starts with notice of a premium increase and too often ends with a new plan costing the same or more for less coverage,” Patrick said, according a live feed on WWLP-TV.
The state, he said, needs medical malpractice reform and doctors to focus on wellness rather than sickness—all things the bill he filed last year addressed. Victims of dental malpractice need a dental witness they can trust.
Patrick also focused on public safety, specifically the “folly of mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.”
“We have proposed reforms to both our habitual offender law and to our mandatory minimum sentencing laws to make the public safer,” Patrick said.
While the small number of the most hardened and destructive offenders must be separated from the public for a long time, there are nonviolent drug offenders, he said.
He said housing these nonviolent offenders is a “costly policy failure” and called for these offenders to be eligible for parole sooner.
Patrick also called for a “comprehensive re-entry program” as well as more education, job training and drug treatment in prisons.
“Ninety-two percent of total prison population is eligible for release at some point,” Patrick said, “and many come out more dangerous than they were when they went in.”
Giving these offenders a supervised release will reintegrate about 500 nonviolent offenders within the next year and save millions in prison costs, Patrick said.
Patrick also called for a “unified community college system,” which will increase funds to $10 million, according to a transcript of the speech on the governor’s website.
This unified system will give students workplace experience and credits that can easily transfer to other colleges, as well as campus career centers that help them into the workplace.
“With a sharper focus, simpler structure, increased funding and greater accountability,” he said, “community colleges can help us better prepare people for the middle-skills jobs of today and tomorrow.”
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