August 1, 2012 | 4:38 PM |

AG Coakley Weighs In On Health Cost Bill

FILED UNDER: Money, Politics, cost, hospitals, Martha Coakley

Mass. Attorney General Martha Coakley

WBUR’s Martha Bebinger spoke briefly with State Attorney General Martha Coakley today about the imminent passage of a new law intended to control rising health care costs and revamp the way medical care is paid for and delivered. The plan, expected to be signed by the governor soon, doesn’t go as far as some advocates had hoped in limiting the power of dominant hospital systems in the region, a distortion in the marketplace that Coakley has been targeting for several years. Here’s Martha’s edited interview:

Attorney General Martha Coakley says she’s confident that a new health care costs bill will help the state take on hospitals whose prices are based on market clout. The bill does not give the AG any new authority, but Coakley says it sets better standards for investigation. The AG says she will keep trying to fix health care pricing, but expects consumers and hospitals to do their part.

“The message is also that the industry and where they go is really important in terms of keeping costs down, keeping everyone insured, keeping high quality health care.”

The AG has issued two reports that say the power of Boston’s largest hospitals to demand high prices drives up health care costs for everyone.

About the author

Blogger, CommonHealth Rachel Zimmerman worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper’s Boston bureau. Rachel has also written for The New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the alternative newspaper Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., among other publications. Rachel co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and spent 2008 as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rachel lives in Cambridge with her husband and two daughters. View all posts by Rachel Zimmerman →