Biz group urges Legislature to lower health care costs

The state’s largest business group is calling on the Legislature to take more seriously the need to lower health costs.

“We must urge you to expand your focus to reducing the health-care costs that continue to threaten the underpinnings of our economy,” Associated Industries of Massachusetts Vice President Katherine Holahan wrote in a letter emailed to House members yesterday, hours before they gave initial approval to a sweeping health care reform bill.

The bill includes $450 million in new assessments on insurers and hospitals. That’s on top of a $200 million assessment on other businesses that lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Baker approved in 2017.

Holahan said AIM is concerned that the assessments will force health companies to add charges onto employers to replenish their reserves. “All these assessments have been levied without any mention of reforms to MassHealth,” Holahan wrote. “AIM’s employer members brace for the next year and a half with no reform in sight and new assessments created to support one specific segment of the health-care system.”

House Democrats are hoping to stabilize community hospitals with the assessments, which could be spread over three years, and have included in their bill other initiatives that AIM favors, including plans to address out-of-network and “surprise billing,” coverage of telemedicine services, reviewing proposed expansions of the scope of practice of medical professionals, and elimination of a “name and shame” list of businesses whose employees are in MassHealth.