Jeff Cook ~ Alaska’s hospitals face great risk if our state opts out and thousands of Alaskans may remain without basic coverage. As president of the Greater Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation, I support the expansion of coverage in this legislative session because it is vital to Alaska hospitals’ collective mission of improving their communities’ health, as well as essential to ensuring the survival of safety net hospitals in our rural areas.
Under the ACA, Alaska hospitals anticipated almost 42,000 Alaskans would gain health coverage through Medicaid or the Alaska KidCare program to offset planned federal assistance. These cuts have already begun. The ACA federal subsidy started in 2014. If not balanced with a significant increase in the number of insured patients, then rising levels of uncompensated care will threaten thousands of health care jobs. And it will be increasingly difficult to continue to provide any sort of care not profitable under these conditions.
Patients without coverage often have no alternative but the emergency room for basic care. So Alaska hospitals often treat complex, chronic conditions — at great economic and social cost — because the uninsured are often forced to delay what could have been inexpensive treatment.
Hospitals incur such losses as part of their service to the community. Yet, as a result, they are forced to reduce services and shift the burden of this cost to businesses and to the privately insured.
Shifting the cost of non-reimbursed care to those with private insurance, and to employers who can still afford to offer health coverage, is not the optimal way to finance health care. But it is part of our complex system.
We know increasing health coverage will improve the lives of uninsured patients, but Alaskans also will benefit from lower insurance premiums if coverage is expanded to the uninsured.
After careful review, the Greater Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation has taken the position that a responsible and fiscally sound plan can be created.
Alaska is exceptionally well situated to expand Medicaid eligibility. As a trustee, I can affirm our hospitals continually struggle to provide the best possible care at the lowest cost. This is a constant and endless quest. Together with the generous federal matching funds that will bring millions into our state, the costs of serving the uninsured can largely be offset by established funding and savings in other areas of the state budget without jeopardizing Alaska’s future.
In the case of Medicaid reform and extension of coverage to the uninsured, the best path is to move forward with reforming our state’s largest health insurance program and extending health care coverage to thousands of uninsured Alaskans, most of them working in our essential industries.
Jeff Cook was born and raised in Fairbanks. He currently serves as the president of the Greater Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation Board of Trustees. The foundation owns Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, which is operated by Banner Health Systems.
Via newsminer.com
