Health Care Crisis Could Cost Taxpayer

COLORADO SPRINGS – Medical professionals across the country says hospitals are facing a crisis when it comes to uncompensated care. “Across the country American’s are less insured, payer programs are paying less to support health care,” says Dr. Larry McEvoy, C.E.O. for Memorial Hospital. “It’s a problem we are going to continue to see.It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.”

According to Memorial, it wrote off close to $30 million dollars in medical care in 2003, that number has more than doubled in 2007 to $65 million. “This is an example of robbing Peter to pay Paul, we take a hit when people can’t pay and then we make it up with being efficient by creating value laden streams in other places,” says McEcoy.

While Memorial pads its budget to compensate for the loss of funds, some worry the city owned hospital will eventually have to turn to taxpayers as the cost continue to climb. “If it turns into a situation where the public has to subsidize the hospital, I want to look at it and see, if we still own a hospital, is there anything we can do to reduce the uncompensated health care costs,” says City Councilman Jerry Heimlicher.

He is proposing revisiting whether or not Memorial Hospital should continue to be owned by the community. “I want to look at the reasons we bought in the 1940’s and if it is still in the best interest of the community.” Heimlicher has asked city staff to look into the possible sale and where the money would go. “We’ve got to look at every alternative to the way we fund services. Today, everybody knows we are falling short on police, we’re falling short on fire.”

One thing he doesn’t want to do is to cut essential services for those who need it. “This could be a win-win, we would wind up with a hospital in competition with a private hospital and all the people who get medical care win and we could wind up with funds we need.”

McEvoy wants to work with City Council and come up with solutions. He admits the industry itself needs to come up with a solution before time runs out. “As a society and as a community we are going to shift in investing in ways to keep people healthy.” He says right now, we only go to the Doctor when we are sick and that needs to change.

If the city decided to sell Memorial, it would have to be decided by voters. Council would have to also outline how to spend the money if approved.