Health Care in America: Something’s Gotta Give

Representative Brad Miller

Congressman Brad Miller has been a great friend of WakeMed’s since his days in the North Carolina General Assembly in the 1990’s, and has since been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He’s on his way back up to Washington this week, and was able to stop by WakeMed on Monday to take a tour of WakeMed’s new Children’s Hospital and discuss several health care reform issues.

Changes must be made to the current health care system, as I’ve said time and again, but the changes must protect – and improve – WakeMed’s ability as a safety net hospital to provide care to our community regardless of their ability to pay.

Currently, Medicaid payments to hospitals and providers fall short in covering the costs of services delivered.  Expanding Medicaid to more individuals, as both the Senate and House bills propose, will exacerbate the already difficult financial situation faced by many hospitals.

Congressman Miller agreed that the proposed health care reform legislation will be an opportunity to start anew, and that a focus on improving cost efficiency is vital. Spending money efficiently and effectively is important because here at WakeMed, we’re already operating on a pretty tight margin. Last year, WakeMed provided more than $135,000,000 in uncompensated care, which accounted for 16.5% of our total operating expenses. Uncompensated care is defined as the total cost of treating charity care patients, bad debt costs and unreimbursed costs of treating Medicare and Medicaid patients. Medicare and Medicaid programs reimburse providers at less than the full cost of providing care.

The Congressman was also interested in finding cost savings in the system. He was supportive of WakeMed’s desire to study cost effective alternatives to the current emergency department triage process – which is complicated by the federal law known as EMTALA.

It was reassuring to hear Congressman Miller’s strong support of the health care reform bills, particularly his support of the issues that are pertinent to our organization – such as the funding for trauma centers that Christine Craig discussed in a previous post, and funding for programs on childhood diseases like asthma and diabetes.

Just after our conversation, State Government Radio caught up with Congressman Miller for an interview. “Health care premiums have doubled in the last 10 years, and we can’t do that again. Something’s gotta give,” he said.