Patrick signs health care cost reform law - Daily Item

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Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick shakes hands with Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo, right, after signing a health care cost containment bill into law on Monday at the State House in Boston. Lynn Rep. Steven Walsh applauds behind Patrick. (Photo / Associated Press)

 

Patrick signs health care cost reform law By Thor Jourgensen / The Daily Item

LYNN — A critic called a health care reform law state Rep. Steven Walsh helped forge and Gov. Deval Patrick signed on Monday “simplistic,” but a supporter said the law is overdue.

“We need to do this. If we don’t, we’re going to see more hospitals closing. You’ve got to start somewhere,” said Lynn Health Care Task Force Chair Leslie Greenberg.

Walsh said it took two years’ worth of work and leadership from Patrick, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and state Senate President Therese Murray to craft the reform law.

“It moves the leverage back to patients,” Walsh said, adding the law will translate into savings for Massachusetts families.

Patrick’s office, in a press release Monday, heralded the law as “… the next phase of health care reform ...” and stated that it will create “… nearly $200 billion in health care cost savings over the next 15 years …”

The statement noted the law creates a $60 million Wellness Fund to help keep Massachusetts residents healthy. Greenberg, a Lynn resident, said Walsh played a key role in drafting the law.

“He actually listened to our concerns about people who could not get care, especially ones with chronic illnesses,” she said.

According to Patrick’s statement and a health reform summary prepared by Walsh’s office, the law creates an 11-member commission to monitor health care pricing by providers and, if necessary, refer a provider to the state Attorney General’s office for investigation.

Lynn Community Health Center Director Lori Abrams Berry said she is in the process of reviewing the law, but said she is “intrigued” by its shift away from a fee-for-service reimbursement system to accountable-care organizations.

“There are some visits patients make to the Center, that if there was a different form of reimbursement, the patient may not need to come to the Center; they could go through a telephone consultation.

In the best of all worlds, we will be improving care and it wouldn’t cost as much,” Berry said.

The law requires health insurers to give customers more access to medical information through websites and telephone information. Greenberg credited Partners HealthCare, owner of North Shore Medical Center including Union Hospital, with taking a lead in information access.

“One of my complaints was separate billing. My husband sees three different doctors and it used to drive him crazy. Now you can check everything online,” she said.

Under the law, the health industry’s costs could grow at a pace matching Massachusetts’ economic growth over the next four years. The industry would be required to keep costs below the state growth rate between 2018 to 2022 and then the rate would adjust upward again to match state growth.

Citizens for Limited Taxation’s Barbara Anderson on Monday called the growth calculation “really simplistic.”

“As long as the economy is growing as fast as we are getting sick, no problem,” she said.

But Walsh said the law “will begin to squeeze some of the waste and inefficiency out of the system.”

“The skeptics can say what they want but when health care costs have been growing at 6.7 percent to 8 percent and economic growth has been 2.4 percent, that’s a real problem,” he said.

Partner’s spokeswoman Jean Graham, in an email statement Monday, called the law’s cost control method a “first-in-the-nation approach.”

“It will be a tremendous challenge for hospitals and doctors to tie medical spending to a little-known economic indicator. It has never been done before,” Graham wrote.

Anderson said government involvement in providing health care in Massachusetts complicates cost control efforts.

She said the industry operates with “all kinds of expectations that they can charge more than they could if they knew the only person they could charge is the sick person.”

The law addresses medical malpractice suits, according to Patrick’s statement, by requiring parties in a suit to spend 182 days trying to negotiate a settlement. Greenberg said the health wellness fund in the law should be coupled with efforts aimed at ensuring people have physicians. She said people often end up in emergency rooms because they are not familiar with basic information involved in getting consistent medical care.

“We need to find out where people are getting lost. Too many people aren’t getting help until they are sick,” Greenberg said.

Anderson warned that duplication of services in the health care industry won’t end simply because a law has been signed. She is worried the law’s cost controls could hurt, not help Massachusetts’ health care industry.

“The big fear I have is people won’t find it worthwhile anymore to become doctors,” she said.

After working with the Task Force for 25 years and helping her husband survive serious ailments, Greenberg regards the new health law as landmark reform. She expressed her feelings to Walsh recently.

“I walked over to him, hugged him and said, ‘Thank you,’” she said.

Thor Jourgensen can be reached at tjourgensen@itemlive.com.