As Steward Health Care bankruptcy proceedings continue, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr filed a budget amendment allowing the attorney general to appoint a special counsel to handle the commonwealth's interests in the case.

"There's a bankruptcy proceeding that's going on here — we want the commonwealth to be fully engaged in that, and any dollars that come back to us a result of that engagement, we'd like to place into that fund and allow the fund to be used to mitigate the impacts of the Steward bankruptcy on other health care providers and patients in the commonwealth of Massachusetts," Tarr told reporters during the Senate's dinner break Tuesday, May 21.

"Certainly, it is foreseeable that that bankruptcy is going to disrupt care for patients, and it's going to disrupt the remaining providers that are in the commonwealth."

Steward owns multiple hospitals in Massachusetts, including Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Morton Hospital in Taunton and Saint Anne's Hospital in Fall River.

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