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Moore: Substantive measures to follow latest round of Health Law changes
State House News Service
November 20, 2007...Saying 200,000 Massachusetts residents who were not insured a year ago now have health insurance, Sen. Richard Moore (D-Uxbridge) cautioned his colleagues today that substantive changes to last year’s landmark health care access law will be needed over the next six months. “We haven’t defined what those are,” Moore said. “We think we’ll need to do some further tweaking down the line.”
Moore said a 33-section conference committee report agreed to by the Senate on Tuesday makes changes to the membership of a health care disparities council, clarifies that the Department of Revenue can issue insurance outreach information to individuals who report that they don't have insurance, and establishes an oversight panel to monitor the Connector Authority and ensure that it is “not becoming another big insurance company” and lives up to its mandate to facilitate insurance enrollment. “It will provide a measure of oversight to this process as it unfolds over the next couple of years,” said Moore, who suggested that the conference committee was a near-reunion of the panel that struck last year’s health insurance law accord.
The new conference report requires the Connector Authority to file a report with the Legislature by Jan. 1, 2008 on Commonwealth Care enrollment numbers. The bill also requires the Health Care Quality and Cost Council to make available by March 1, 2008 comparative cost information “by facility, clinician or physician group practice for obstetrical services, physician office visits, high-volume elective surgical procedures, high-volume diagnostic tests, and high-volume therapeutic procedures.”
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