A few dozen of the 721 bills that passed the Montana Legislature this year grabbed the public’s rapt attention hot-button social issue bills and big-dollar spending measures that prompted headlines and drew, in some cases, thousands of public comments as lawmakers wrangled over their fates.
Most of the state’s new laws, however, took far quieter paths en route to the hallowed chapters of Montana Code Annotated.
A tally of public comments produced by legislative staff, reflecting web and phone messages sent to lawmakers through the Legislature’s information services desk, indicates there were more than 127,000 individual comments on the 1,313 bills that were considered over the course of the 2021 session. The lion’s share of those comments, two-thirds, dealt with only 50 high-profile measures.
05.10.2021
Over the past four months, lawmakers in Helena have debated and fine-tuned a slate of policies designed to address Montana’s long-standing issues with medical access and affordability. Several of those bills are now poised to take effect, a development that health care leaders hail as welcome progress following a year of immense challenge.
TELEHEALTH
One major change rises directly from the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically the temporary lifting of regulations governing telehealth services. A pair of bills passed by the Legislature make those regulatory suspensions permanent while expanding telehealth’s prospective post-pandemic role in Montana. Senate Bill 347 allows patients to receive remote treatment not just from physicians and mental health professionals but from physical therapists, speech pathologists and audiologists. It also ensures that telehealth is covered under Medicaid and, in a nod to rural areas lacking in reliable interne
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, engaged in the early 2000s, were spotted together in Montana.
Montana is gaining a seat in Congress after the 2020 census because of its population growth.
Like the former A-list couple, Montana will be receiving significant media attention.
Just as all politics are local, according to a phrase coined by the legendary House Speaker Tip O Neill of Massachusetts, all celebrity reunions can be connected in some way to politics.
Another well-known Massachusetts-raised celebrity, the actor and director Ben Affleck, is reportedly rekindling a decades-old romance with his fellow A-list actor and singer Jennifer Lopez, to whom he was engaged in 2003.