Tarr lands key spot on health-care panel

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June 15, 2012

Tarr lands key spot on health-care panel

From Staff and Wire Reports The Gloucester Daily Times Fri Jun 15, 2012, 05:56 AM EDT

BOSTON — State Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr of Gloucester will play a key role in hammering out an agreement between House and Senate lawmakers on 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.

Tar was named Thursday to a six-member House-Senate conference committee headed by Uxbridge Democrat Sen. Richard Moore and Lynn Democrat Rep. Steven Walsh. They will be joined by Sen. Anthony Petruccelli, D-East Boston, co-chairman of the Financial Services Committee; House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano D-Quincy, and Rep. Jay Barrows, R-Mansfield.

Moore and Walsh are co-chairmen of 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 filed by Gov. Deval Patrick for more than a year. The committee ultimately decided to send Patrick's bill to the Senate, while both branches subsequently developed their own heavily amended proposals.

Among the many major issues the conference committee will need to resolve are whether to include a luxury assessment on high cost care providers, the target for allowable health care cost growth, the level of financial support for a new wellness and prevention fund, the size and autonomy level of government oversight agencies, and the final contours of medical malpractice system reforms.

While many of the proposals in the bill are untested on the scale that legislators envision in their proposals, lawmakers believe their bills could cut projected health care spending in Massachusetts by $150 billion to $160 billion over the next 15 years while delivering more coordinated care to patients.

According to Senate clerks, the bill was among the most difficult they've ever had to assemble, more challenging than the voluminous annual budget, due to its complexity and the volume of amendments adopted that needed to be properly inserted into the legislation before it was sent to conference.

"I think it's going to be a difficult conference committee," Tarr told the State House News Service.

Moore was the lead conferee, with former Rep. Patricia Walrath, on the conference that produced the 2006 health insurance access law signed by Gov. Mitt Romney. Mariano also served on that conference, as well as then-Ways and Means Chair Sen. Therese Murray, now the Senate president.

The other 2006 conferees, former Sen. Brian Lees and former Rep. Robert Hargraves, no longer serve in the Legislature.