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HEALTH CARE COST CONTROL BILL GETS $49.6M PRICE TAG, FAVORABLE REPORT
The Committee on Health Care Financing on Wednesday advanced Senate President Therese Murray's bill to control health care costs, although both committee chairs said the bill was likely to be vastly reworked during the legislative process. A spokesman for the Senate said the full chamber intends to take up the bill on the April 17. As currently constituted, the bill is expected to cost $49.6 million, according to a committee analysis, with the bulk of the cost being applied to the transfer of paper hospital records to an electronic filing system. That provision is expected to cost $25 million in its first year. Other costs include $1,465,000 for a primary care recruitment center, which includes a loan forgiveness program, $1,180,000 for insurance price structure transparency and rate increase hearings and $2,300,000 for reporting of hospital-acquired infections. The bill also includes provisions to ban pharmaceutical companies from giving gifts to doctors and requires insurers to count nurse practitioners as primary care providers in order to alleviate a shortage of primary care workers in the state. Committee House Chair Patricia Walrath said the bill was far from a final draft. "We've got a ways to go on this one," she told the News Service after the committee voted favorably on the bill. Walrath's co-chair, Sen. Richard Moore, agreed, saying the $49.5 million estimate was "not a hard and fast figure." Walrath said the electronic records provision may be more desirable after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt suggested last month that providers who use electronic records would be treated more favorably under Medicaid reimbursement rules. Moore said the Legislature may authorize line items in the bill to be paid for over more than one fiscal year, similar to how the state funded several of the items included in the Chapter 58 health care reform law. The bill emerges from committee with 52 related bills attached. During committee discussion, Rep. Frank Hynes expressed concern that one of the attached bills pertaining to asthma care would be scrapped. Moore said the Senate was examining whether to add an asthma component to the law, noting, "I like the proposal."
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