Legislators will travel to other states to find health price solutions
Antonio Caban/State House News Service
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg detailed plans for a working group to meet with experts from other states and take a "deep dive" into factors that are driving health care costs higher in Massachusetts in remarks delivered in front of the Health Policy Commission.
With cost increases outpacing economic growth here, Massachusetts senators will travel to states around the country to study how they are working to control costs in the health care delivery system with an eye toward transferring those initiatives here, Senate President Stanley Rosenberg said Tuesday morning.
Kicking off the second of the Health Policy Commission's two-day cost trends hearing, Rosenberg said the Milbank Memorial Fund, a New York-based public policy group, is working with the Senate to explore strategies used by other states to keep health care costs in check.
The Senate has identified pharmaceutical drug pricing, long-term care, social disparities in the delivery of health care, behavioral health and substance abuse as the policy areas of focus, Rosenberg said.
"These areas we are hoping by identifying best practices in other states might inform the conversation here and lead to legislation and other policy actions that could help make a big difference in our work here on cost containment," he said.
Senate Majority Leader Harriette Chandler and Sen. James Welch, the Senate chair of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, are leading the effort, Rosenberg told the News Service after addressing the commission.
Rosenberg also said the Senate is planning to invite experts from other states to Massachusetts so lawmakers do not necessarily have to travel to be involved with the study.
Pete Wilson, press secretary for Rosenberg, said the Senate and Milbank are still working out the details of the trips, including which senators will travel to which states and when the trips will take place.
Rosenberg said the idea for the study surfaced six or eight months ago, after a group of senators returned from a Milbank-funded trip to study marijuana legalization in Colorado. He said the Senate has already had initial discussions with Health Policy Commission Executive Director David Seltz and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Though the timing of the trips and visits remains unclear, Rosenberg told the Health Policy Commission on Tuesday that he hopes to have the results of the study within a year.
"I'm hoping that by the time you convene next year that we will have a deep dive on some of the best practices in some of the other states to enter into the dialogue here in the commonwealth," he said, referring to next year's cost trends hearing.
A 2012 law required the state to set a statewide benchmark for annual health care expenditure growth in a bid to keep costs in check. A September report by the Center for Health Information and Analysis, an agency created under the law, found that health spending grew 4.1 percent in 2015, outpacing the 3.6 percent benchmark for the second consecutive year.
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