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House plans to release health care cost-control plan Friday

Legislative leaders said Thursday that they will release comprehensive plans to control health care costs in Massachusetts within the next week.

The House has scheduled a press conference Friday afternoon at 2:30, during which House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Representative Steven Walsh, a Lynn Democrat who co-chairs the Health Care Financing Committee, will discuss details of the House proposal. The Senate plans to release its cost-control plan on Wednesday.

Over the past year, DeLeo and Walsh have hinted about how they intend to curb spending on medical care, which has been climbing 6.7 percent to 8 percent a year, both because of rising prices paid to providers and the growing amount of care patients use. As a result, employers and consumers have been struggling to pay higher and higher health insurance premiums.

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DeLeo said in March that the House proposal would aim to cut the spending growth in half, to about 3.7 percent, close to the overall rate of growth of the state’s economy. But neither he nor Walsh has said how they plan to reach that goal, by persuasion or by regulation.

Hospitals, doctors, insurers, and government leaders have been debating for two years whether the industry can control costs on its own or whether the government has to intervene with some type of price controls.

Governor Deval Patrick proposed legislation last year that would give his administration authority to scrutinize insurers’ contracts with, and fees paid to, hospitals and doctors, and consider whether those fees are appropriate before approving insurers’ requests for premium increases.

Some have argued for more direct and aggressive government rate-setting, while others are pushing for no government role at all in guiding prices.

DeLeo has indicated that the House may come down somewhere in the middle.


Liz Kowalczyk can be reached at kowalczyk@globe.com.