AN ACT TO IMPROVE HEALTH CARE COST ACCOUNTABILITY: would require that the commission every year, hold public hearings based on the report submitted by the center for health information and analysis comparing the growth in total health care expenditures to the health care growth benchmark for the previous calendar year. The hearings shall examine health care provider, provider organization, and private and public health care payer costs, prices, weighted average payer rates, and cost trends, with particular attention to factors that contribute to cost growth within the commonwealth’s health care system.

This would include providers and provider organizations, testimony concerning payment systems, care delivery models, payer mix, cost structures, administrative and labor costs, capital and technology cost, adequacy of public payer reimbursement levels, reserve levels, utilization trends, relative price, weighted average payer rate, quality improvement and care-coordination strategies, investments in health information technology, the relation of private payer reimbursement levels to public payer reimbursements for similar services, efforts to improve the efficiency of the delivery system, efforts to reduce the inappropriate or duplicative use of technology and the impact of price transparency on prices.