Conference Committee Named For Mass. Health Care Cost Bill

State House News Service reports that legislative teams from the House and Senate are heading to the negotiating table to devise a single plan aimed at cutting health care costs through a variety of payment and delivery reforms:

Uxbridge Democrat Sen. Richard Moore and Lynn Democrat Rep. Steven Walsh will lead the Senate and House negotiating teams on omnibus legislation aimed at controlling health care costs and improving the quality of patient care by deploying new payment methods and other transparency and innovation measures.

Moore and Walsh will be joined on the six-member conference committee by Sen. Anthony Petruccelli (D-East Boston), co-chair of the Financial Services Committee, House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano (D-Quincy), Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) and Rep. Jay Barrows (R-Mansfield). The negotiators were named Thursday as House and Senate members each voted to stand by their own proposals.

Moore and Walsh co-chair the Legislature's Health Care Financing Committee, a panel that failed to forge an agreement on health care cost containment legislation after reviewing a bill file by Gov. Deval Patrick for more than a year. The committee ultimately decided to send Patrick's bill to the Senate. Both branches subsequently developed their own heavily amended proposals (H 4155 and S 2270).