Healey to focus on workforce, health care problems

Governor Maura Healey’s expected bill next year to fuel life sciences growth will look different from initiatives championed by past administrations, focusing on building a blue-collar workforce, boosting biomanufacturing, and solving big health care problems. The state’s first life sciences initiative was launched by former Governor Deval Patrick in 2008 with $1 billion allocated by the Legislature over 10 years. By providing grants and tax breaks to companies that set up shop, expanded, or created jobs in Massachusetts, it cemented the state’s standing as a global industry hub. It was extended under Patrick’s successor, Charlie Baker, in 2018, with another $500 million. But the money runs out next year. And with 18 of the world’s top 20 drugmakers now operating in the state, the Healey proposal — dubbed Life Sciences 3.0 — is likely to offer a different mix of incentives to encourage drug companies that already do research in Massachusetts to make their medicines here, too. That, in turn, would provide jobs for blue-collar workers without four-year college degrees. Administration officials have also said they’d like to expand the reach of the biotech sector, now clustered in and around Cambridge and Boston, to other parts of the state. And taking a page from a new federal agency backing health care “moon shots,” administration officials would fund pilot programs that would team drug and device makers with hospitals and health insurers to close health equity gaps, treat mental illness, and tackle intractable diseases. The challenge for state leaders, Yvonne Hao, the Massachusetts secretary of economic development, said in an interview, is, “How we solve these big problems and create lots of great jobs and growth and companies for Massachusetts while we do that.” State officials are expected to submit the Life Sciences 3.0 bill to the Legislature in the early months of 2024, giving lawmakers time to approve it before their session ends in July. Many of the bill’s details, along with the funding request, are still being sorted, Hao said. — ROBERT WEISMAN