Health panel ventures into political arena
Altman: We’re providing information, not telling people how to vote
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TOP OFFICIALS AT THE HEALTH POLICY COMMISSION privately began debating this summer whether it made sense for the watchdog agency to wade into the political arena and analyze the potential impact of a ballot question mandating nurse staffing ratios at the state’s hospitals.
Stuart Altman, the chairman of the commission, said the agency didn’t take a vote or hold public hearings on whether to get involved. Instead, Altman said, he discussed the idea with David Seltz, the executive director, and several other board members.
“We looked at our overall mandate and basically came to the conclusion that this is such an important issue and would have significant long-term impact on cost, quality, and access that we had to do it,” he said.
The commission sought input from the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which raised no objections as long as the agency focused on providing analysis and information and did not recommend how Massachusetts residents should vote.
During his comments at Wednesday’s hearing on the commission’s preliminary research on the ballot question, Altman indicated he had grave concerns about the cost implications of the initiative. He noted the commission’s analysis indicated the cost impact of the ballot question would be roughly half of the state’s overall benchmark for health care cost growth of 3.1 percent.
Yet Altman declined to say where he stood or how he would vote on the ballot question. “We want to separate what our analysis is from how you vote,” he said. “You could wind up saying, yes, this is going to cost a billion dollars but it’s worth it and vote yes.”
Julie Pinkham, executive director of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which is pushing the ballot question dealing with nurse staffing ratios, said the group has filed a public records request for documents dealing with the Health Policy Commission’s decision to do the analysis.
“Early on in this process I was unequivocally told that they had no interest whatsoever in gravitating into this debate, and that made perfect sense to me. Why? Because the Health Policy Commission is the agency that actually is overseeing this,” Pinkham said, referring to the ballot question’s language, which designates the commission as the agency that would craft regulations to implement the proposed law.
Pinkham said the Health Policy Commission doesn’t usually get into the analysis of health policy. “We have over 340 different health care bills – some very large ones that came up recently – and never once has the Health Policy Commission endeavored into those analyses,” she said. “So they are breaking new ground, and I expect that everybody should take a careful eye and watch closely what happens in the future as a result of this.”
Seltz, the executive director of the commission, said the commission’s approach in this case was consistent with all the other research it conducts on health cost trends. He said the agency typically does not publicly announce it is exploring an issue until it determines whether the research is feasible.
“It was something we had to work through, and that took some time,” he said. “We do think of this just as any other research project we put forward.”
But he said voters need information as they grapple with such complex issues. “We’re just entering into a different time, where voters, through the ballot measures, are being asked to make weightier and weightier decisions,” he said.
Michael Jonas contributed to this story.