State Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney asked the Legislature for help after breaking off mediation efforts between the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi. Chaney called “horrendous” the complaints his office has gotten from affected patients. “It’s deplorable that the citizens of our state are being used as pawns to settle this dispute,” he said.
Chaney has recognized he needs more authority to avoid such patient harming disputes. “I will be pursuing legislation in the 2023 Legislative Session to protect consumers in the future from getting caught in the middle of these types of contract disputes,” Chaney wrote in his mediation suspension notice.
Maybe his criticism of both parties and outreach to the Legislature will have impact. Rumors abound that the two will end their bitter dispute prior to year-end.
Chaney is not the only agency head frustrated with helplessness to deal with critical problems.
The anti-fraud HOPE Act passed by the Legislature in 2017 is giving Bob Anderson, the executive director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, fits. He told the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families that the act over-polices poor people and prevents them from accessing child care. That keeps them from getting jobs.
And that causes a problem for Ryan Miller, head of the state workforce development agency, Accelerate Mississippi, who wants them in the workforce. “The number-one topic that continually comes up is child care, or lack of available child care,” he told the Senate study group as reported in Mississippi Today.
Then there is embattled State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney. Facing a “health care crisis in this state” we must deal with, he told Mississippi Public Broadcasting, “We are seeing an increasing number of hospitals entering a danger zone in their ability to operate and sustain operations.”
“We have to choose to do something about it,” he added. The problem is he and his State Department of Health have no means to help hospitals.
One in desperate need is Greenwood Leflore Hospital. “Hospital’s Negotiations With UMMC Stall” read the headline in the Greenwood Commonwealth. That means no help until next year if at all. At the MEC’s annual Hobnob last week Chaney told reporters he expected the hospital would have to close.
Out of cash, the hospital is cutting every service it can and still keep its doors open, reported the Commonwealth. It must maintain its limited in-patient services in order to maintain its licenses and certificates of need. Plus the hospital owes $5.6 million on a federal loan and must catch up on deferred maintenance for about $3.5 million before UMMC will sign a contract. The hospital has asked its city and county owners to cover those costs.
These executives’ have turned their eyes to the Legislature for help. Will the cash flush Legislature respond? Or will it turn its often blind eye to these dilemmas?
“I showed how you should work to help everyone who is weak” – Acts 20:25.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.
12 comments:
Hmmm, so government regulation can help the consumer? Blasphemous!
Let the free market sort it out. “Capitalism” requires human sacrifices sometimes. Even child sacrifices.
For some reason we are seeing business and services that cannot make enough to keep the doors open. Those businesses and services keep asking for help to keep them in business. If a business or service cannot make enough money to keep their doors open there is a bad problem. Either they do not have something the public wants, they are over priced and there is something comparable to them for a more reasonable price, or they are using their money for things that it is not intended to be used for. In so many of the cases it is unwise use of the money they have coming in. The people who do not use what they are selling should not have to pay for them to stay in business. The people who uses their service or product should pay for them to keep their doors open. If that is not the case they should get out of the business and let another business take their place.
it will be paid
Medical care and prescription drugs are very overpriced and overregulated in the U.S. I base this on living in two other countries where I obtained these services and paid cash. No, I wasn't subsidized by the local government. I also walked into pharmacies and obtained medicine that would require a doctor's prescription here, but not there.
12:05, and the funny part is you can get meds shipped to your home from another country that you have to have a doctor's permission slip here to get.
The problem is the heavy burden of uncompensated care which drives up the costs fot the insured and the insurers.
But we can’t talk about that.
4:36, that is a problem. But it is not THE problem.
Choice and competition solves so much that government can't.
@4:36 to follow up your post, what is unsaid is that in "certain parts of the state", the amount of uncompensated care dwarfs the amount of compensated care, and it is impossible for any hospital to function when you consider the mountains of both federal and state regulations that for some reason just are not applicable to the areas in question. Our elected officials are aware of the problem, however it is obvious that no one has any workable solution. But it is guaranteed that if enough hospitals close, not one of these sorry individuals will be reelected.
Looks like the State is taking over the Greenwood hospital.
The people in that area have no health insurance so now the State will pay for their care.
Let's not overlook the fact that creating additional agencies only compounds the problems. There are at least six agencies and every junior and community college (not to mention a host of private organizations) involved in so-called 'workforce development'. Didn't mean to leave out all the secondary schools that have career development on campus.
For at least the past 55 years, neither the state nor the federal government nor the two in concert have even attempted to get a handle on this madness.
This caught my eye in the above article: "And that causes a problem for Ryan Miller, head of the state workforce development agency, Accelerate Mississippi, who wants them in the workforce."
What the hell is 'Accelerate Mississippi'? That too will fall by the wayside in a year or two. The list of acronyms (dead and alive) is the length of Uncle Fester's Long Johns.
5:27 - "Accelerate Mississippi" is nothing more than another burden on the PERS system. Wasn't intended to do anything and wont. Like the radio guy who runs The State Department of RE-hab-ilita-shun services, those millions in advertising dollars could be better spent than gifting it to Super-Tawk.
Problem with the free market argument is that in a free market system costs and/or charges to a consumer aren’t capped. So if demand goes up, price goes up. Not so in medicine. Charges are capped by the government. So there really isn’t a free market per se. if you wanted to save some expenses cut the several layers of administrative overhead and number of administrators in any hospital. Many make mid six figures and do nothing. Keep in mind physicians are only approximately 10% of any hospital bill with the rest made by hospital and technical charges.
Post a Comment