Joint Committee on Health Care Financing Hearing on Senate Bill #2526 An Act Relative to Promoting Cost Containment, Transparency and Efficiency in the Delivery of Quality Health Care, Testimony of Christopher Anderson

Thank you, Chairman Moore and Chairwoman Walrath for the opportunity to submit testimony on issues of importance to the state’s life sciences employers.

The Massachusetts High Technology Council was formed in 1977 by high tech CEOs whose mission is to help make Massachusetts the most competitive state in which to create, operate, and expand high tech businesses.  That remains our mission today.  Council members employ hundreds of thousands of skilled workers in all of Massachusetts’s key technology sectors, including computer hardware, life sciences, software, medical products, defense technology, semiconductor, and telecommunications.  Our board includes the executive leadership of tech employers such as Amgen, Biogen, Boston Scientific, Dynamics Research, EMC, Genzyme, Teradyne, Wyeth and Vertex.

Governor Patrick has recognized how powerful an economic driver the biopharmaceutical industry is, and accordingly has made it the $1 billion centerpiece of his economic development growth strategy.  That promise of the state’s life sciences economy is found in small biotech companies as well as large, international biopharmaceutical employers.

Massachusetts is home to many global pharmaceutical leaders that in recent years have decided to invest in Massachusetts: Merck, Pfizer, Astra-Zeneca and dozens of others have established research facilities here.  Because Massachusetts possesses the world’s premier life sciences research & development cluster, these companies understand that to be competitive they must have a presence here.  Massachusetts is the new home to a $1 Billion Bristol Myers Squibb manufacturing facility and Astra Zeneca is currently expanding its Waltham campus adding hundreds of new jobs. 

These recent victories are a result of Massachusetts breaking with its tradition of being a regulatory bottleneck, streamlining permitting and moving toward a less arbitrary corporate tax structure.  We need to continue forward momentum for the economic development gains we are currently seeing and for that reason The Massachusetts High Technology Council supports many elements of Senate Bill #2526 an act relative to promoting cost containment, transparency and efficiency in the delivery of quality health care, but objects strongly to the inclusion of language further regulating pharmaceutical industry marketing that is already addressed by federal guidelines.

In a November 2, 2005 letter to the Legislature, the High Tech Council joined with more than 20 other regional and statewide business associations in support of measures that would deliver health care cost controls to the state’s ambitious reform efforts.  A key point of the letter was to emphasize the need for controlling costs throughout the health care system.  The economic development officials wrote: “We do support initiatives to promote transparency in health care, to allow insurance providers the flexibility to create lower cost products, to promote the use of technology through e-health records and a moratorium on new or a relaxation of the current mandates on providers. All of these proposals will help us to control costs. Cost, after all, is the single biggest problem we face today in the delivery of health care.”

Despite the pomp and circumstance at the signing of the 2006 health care reform proposal and national attention the plan has received, health care in Massachusetts has reached a crisis point.  While significant that more Massachusetts residents now have health care, the crushing cost of the program now risks the long-term viability of the health care system, the state budget – and even our economy. This crisis has been