This is how it Affects You

It may seem that the debate regarding health care nationalization is taking place in a far away location and may be hard to visualize as having an impact on our lives.
However, the current government-run system such as Medicaid and Medicare is already playing havoc with local health care policy and an expansion of this system would likely create more problems.

According to a 2008 study by the American Hospital Association (AMA), hospitals were underpaid by nearly 32 billion dollars in 2007 because they accepted Medicaid and Medicare.

The underpayment problem is so bad that local Logan County officials are strongly considering moving the entire Logan County Hospital from its present location on the west side of Guthrie to a location at I-35 and Seward Road partly in an effort to attract what they see as the more affluent residents of South Logan County who can afford private insurance, thus reducing the percentage of patients who pay with Medicaid. This move would be understandably disturbing for residents of Guthrie proper and Crescent area residents who would now have to drive farther to access to emergency care.

Aside from moving the emergency care to the south, the move also presents local residents with the daunting fact the many millions of dollars of debt would likely be incurred by the hospital trust in order to construct the new facility. This debt would likely require that part of the local sales tax be pledged against it which would probably keep the tax on the books for many years to come.

The federal government`s polices present local medical leaders with a second catch-22. In order to build for the future, the new facility would have room for many more bed spaces. However, if the hospital trust chooses to expand its capacity over its current number of bed spaces, the Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates will drop even further. This well meaning policy is meant to support rural hospitals, but in reality it discourages hospitals from expanding services. This policy presents the likelihood that taxpayers will be indebted for constructing part of a new facility that will sit unused for years while local officials try to decide if they can afford to accept the lower reimbursement rates.

And what happens if the federal government takes action to set up an expanded Medicaid and Medicare program that in a few years forces private insurers out of business? Than the new investment strategy could prove futile as although some of the current charity care may be moved to the new government system the percentage of payers using the government system would only grow.

So, because of the federal government`s policies, hospital trust officials are forced to consider a very risky move that could leave county government responsible for millions of dollars of debt and local taxpayers footing a bill for years to come.

In short, the nationalization of health care would allow the federal government to dictate rates to local providers and that burden will be paid for by the taxpayers in more ways than one.

This is just one small example of how these types of issues should never be delegated to the federal government. The government`s one size-fits-all polices simply stop making sense by the time they are applied at the local level.