Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Indicator is 10% Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General, just released her 2011 report on health care in the Commonwealth. The AG’s office delivered civil investigative demands, the equivalent of a subpoena, to three major health plans and 16 different provider organizations. They then reviewed payment rates among the plans and providers, and incorporated health plan risk adjustment in their analyses. They also reviewed available quality data – which showed little correlation with cost. There are 55 pages of gems here – and I’ll talk about the relation of wealth and health care costs in a future post. The news reports I’ve heard so far have concentrated on disparities of provider payments – with some providers getting payments as much as twice as high as others. The AG’s office concludes that addressing price inequities was a prerequisite to lowering the cost of health care, and that moving to global or bundled paym...