Orshe

Now that it’s expanded health-insurance coverage to nearly all of its citizens, Massachusetts is trying to figure out what to do about the rapid rise of health costs.

The latest proposal comes from the state’s governor, Deval Patrick, who yesterday proposed a bill that would give the state the power to review — and, in some cases, reject — rate increases by doctors and hospitals.

Here’s a key paragraph from the bill:

Like plenty of other states, Tennessee is strapped for cash and looking for ways to save money. Cuts are likely for TennCare, the state’s Medicaid managed care program.

But the state’s hospitals may ask to pay more taxes in order to stave off cuts to the program, the Tennessean reports.

Hard to believe, but it was just weeks ago that everybody was busy hashing out the last-minute nitty gritty of what the Dems’ final health-care bill would look like.

Now, in a 59-41 world, President Obama’s call for a televised bipartisan discussion of health care — a proposal that’s reasonable enough, but pretty dull and process-y — passes for big news on the health-care overhaul front.

In 2005, Illinois passed a law to cap noneconomic damages in medical malpractice suits. Today, the state’s Supreme Court struck down the law.

The court said the law that established caps — $500,000 in cases against doctors, and $1 million in cases against hospitals — violated the separation of powers clause in the state’s constitution.

Because they can.

Some Massachusetts hospitals charge private insurers twice as much as other hospitals. It’s not because they deliver higher quality care or treat sicker patients. It’s not because they treat a different mix of uninsured, Medicare, Medicaid and private-insurance patients.

It’s because they have market leverage and can negotiate higher prices in their contracts with insurance companies.

WellPoint’s efforts to control medical costs include “more aggressive” contract negotiations with health-care providers and the somewhat euphemistically described “medical management levers,” according to a Thomson Reuters transcript of the insurer’s call with analysts.

High-tech medical equipment can improve outcomes for patients — but it can also create new complications and safety risks.

This morning’s New York Times makes that point by examining Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy — a high-tech system for treating cancer patients with radiation.

Starting this year, some high-profile Boston hospitals put new rules in place that prohibited their docs from being paid by drug companies to give speeches. One doc recently left one of the hospitals — and a job as an instructor at Harvard med school — in order to keep getting paid by the industry, the Boston Globe reports.

Sorry, one more New Year’s story to get out of the way: Top doctors at Mass. General and Brigham & Women’s — two of the most prestigious hospitals in the country — have to limit their financial ties to the drug and device industries under rules that kicked in on the first of the year.

Sen. Chuck Grassley has been following the money in health care for years now. Yesterday, he wrote to the AMA, the American Cancer Society and a bunch of other nonprofit advocacy groups to ask how much of their funding comes from the drug, device and insurance industries.