BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts House and Senate negotiators will be trying to reconcile differences in major health care bills that have cleared both chambers.
Both proposals seek to stabilize health care costs by narrowing price disparities between large teaching hospitals and smaller community hospitals around Massachusetts. But the two chambers take different approaches to the problem.
Negotiators have roughly five weeks to resolve differences before formal legislative sessions come to an end on July 31.
The House has proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in temporary assessments on large hospitals and insurers, with the fees going to a trust fund to provide grants to smaller hospitals.
The Senate version relies more on price floors for insurance payments to hospitals.
Both bills also seek to give the state more oversight over prescription drug pricing.
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