Healthcare bill due this month
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Gov. Charlie Baker wanted a MassHealth reform bill earlier this year, but the Senate is expected to unveil a bill in the next six months.
Weeks after his deadline expired for lawmakers to take action on reforming MassHealth, Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday said valid concerns had been raised about his plan and lawmakers are taking an appropriate amount of time to review it.
"We put a whole series of reforms in front of the Legislature, which they said, appropriately, that they wanted time to digest and discuss and think about, and our hope is that sometime this fall we'll be engaging with them in a pretty robust conversation about some other things we can do to deal with the role and the size and the cost of the MassHealth program," Baker told the Health Policy Commission on Monday at an annual hearing on cost trends in the sector.
On July 17, when Baker signed a $39.4 billion annual budget and vetoed $320 million in spending, he called on lawmakers to take action on reforms within 60 days and warned that without timely moves "corrective action will be needed to make up for the corresponding revenues and savings associated with this proposal."
The Legislature enacted a $200 million health insurance surcharge on employers, but rejected Baker's reform package – including a proposal to move 140,000 people out of the state's Medicaid program and into subsidized insurance plans.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg on Monday outlined in broad strokes a health care cost control bill his chamber plans to debate in the next six weeks.
Rosenberg told reporters that the bill, the product of months of work by a group of senators, is expected to be released this month and debated in the Senate before lawmakers break for their winter recess on Nov. 15.
The bill's goals include reducing hospital readmissions and unnecessary emergency room use, enhancing transparency on prescription drug costs, and encouraging savings through collaboration, the Amherst Democrat said.
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