WBUR’s Bianca Vazquez Toness reports that if the measure is approved, it would “mark the most significant overhaul of the state’s health care marketplace since former Gov. Mitt Romney signed a law requiring most residents to purchase health insurance.”

House and Senate lawmakers will likely vote on the health care cost overhaul tomorrow. That will give them limited time to discuss what will likely be a complicated bill. All legislation has to be wrapped up before the legislative year ends at midnight. And there’s more than health care to complete. Like college sophomores during exam time, lawmakers this year have left a mountain of unfinished business until the last minute.

State House News Service reports that legislative teams from the House and Senate are heading to the negotiating table to devise a single plan aimed at cutting health care costs through a variety of payment and delivery reforms:

Uxbridge Democrat Sen. Richard Moore and Lynn Democrat Rep. Steven Walsh will lead the Senate and House negotiating teams on omnibus 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.

Moore and Walsh will be joined on the six-member conference committee by Sen. Anthony Petruccelli (D-East Boston), co-chair of the Financial Services Committee, House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano (D-Quincy), Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) and Rep. Jay Barrows (R-Mansfield). The negotiators were named Thursday as House and Senate members each voted to stand by their own proposals.

Moore and Walsh co-chair 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 file by Gov. Deval Patrick for more than a year. The committee ultimately decided to send Patrick’s bill to the Senate. Both branches subsequently developed their own heavily amended proposals (H 4155 and S 2270).

Introducing the bill this afternoon, Lynn Rep. Steven Walsh, the House chair of the Committee on Health Care Financing, tried to reassure those fearful that the plan could undermine the medical industry’s ability to provide top-notch care. Walsh said the bill won’t hurt the state’s premier health care industry which, he said, recently cared for his baby and “saved my son’s life.”

For those watching at home, here’s a handy guide to the flurry of amendments filed, put together by Joshua Archambault, of the Pioneer Institute. He writes:

275 amendments have been filed, and legislators appear to be more focused on social policy, labor policy, and special-interest carve outs than health delivery and payment reform. Some of the more colorful amendments consist of:
Social Policy: Studying sex ed in charter schools.(#30) 4 amendments dealing with family planning (#32, 139, 264, 265), removing ultrasound diagnostic imaging from the definition of an advanced diagnostic imaging service (#179), and health care equity (#217).

Labor Appointments: There are 5 amendments giving appointments to the Massachusetts Nurses Association (#11, 42, 63, 86, 91), and 6 for AFL-CIO (#44, 137, 242, 244, 245, 246).

Special Interests: Too many to mention, but examples such as podiatry (#64), numerous groups added to loan repayment program including: nurses, those providing rehabilitative services such as physical therapy, occupational therapy and prosthetics and orthotics, rural primary care sites, community based behavioral health organizations. Amendment #71 would allow ACOs to be exempt from a major surcharge.

4 New Mandates: Annual cytologic screenings (#162), acupuncture (#175), hearing aids for kids of state employees in GIC, or all individual policies plus all related services(#243), amino acid-based elemental formulas (#248)
Soda Tax, (#267)

Unpopular Section 66: 6 amendments to change section 66 of the bill, which includes provisions to force providers to have a firewall between hospitals when negotiating with insurers.

We’ll keep you updated as things progress.