New Massachussetts, California Initiatives Could Help Curb Costs Nationwide

At a National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) Forum held on Capitol Hill today, Harvard economist David Cutler and William Kramer, an executive with Pacific Business Group on Health, briefed Washington stakeholders and policy-makers on the latest thinking about how to curb costs while expanding coverage from state level reformers in Massachusetts and large employers in California. Cutler, a respected health economist, described the package of aggressive new payment, market, and administrative reforms nearing enactment in Massachusetts.Kramer noted large employers’ frustration with the pace of efforts to rein in growth in the cost of medical care, and laid out steps that Medicare and the federal government could take to turbocharge those efforts.