Health care is a business and economic driver in the East Valley, similar to the aerospace or defense industries. The health care sector makes effective use of private and public funds to create jobs, support ancillary services and support the purchase of local materials. Statewide, the hospital industry is 63 percent larger than the hospitality industry and 37 percent larger than the electronics and aerospace industries combined.
Throughout the “Great Recession,” hospitals were one of the few industries that did not experience massive lay-offs and largely retained or enhanced employment levels. But the continued economic downturn and the dramatic rise in the uninsured, which occurred last fiscal year (more than 140,000 people lost their insurance due to state budget cuts), has put an unsustainable strain on hospital finances from patients who need services, but are unable to pay.
Gov. Jan Brewer’s plan to restore Medicaid coverage is a sound one. Arizona voters have twice approved providing Medicaid coverage to Arizonans below federally-designated levels of poverty, and the Governor’s proposal would help fulfill the will of the voters.
There also is a clear economic argument to be made for this plan. Arizona needs to stay competitive in the region — since so many of the other western states are maximizing the Medicaid dollars, we will be at a strategic disadvantage if we do not do the same. The governor’s plan will inject $2 billion into our economy, keeping Arizonans’ tax dollars in Arizona and helping to maintain and create thousands of jobs in the state. The plan will also alleviate the burden of uncompensated care costs that get placed on businesses and Arizona families who are paying higher rates to compensate for uninsured patients in need of care.
We encourage business and community leaders throughout the East Valley to support the governor’s proposal as a cost effective way to provide insurance for more than 240,000 Arizonans and to help our economy continue to move into full recovery.
For more information, go to www.RestoringArizona.com.
Tim Bricker is the President and CEO of Chandler Regional and Mercy Gilbert medical centers.
Accuracy posted at 5:09 pm on Sat, Mar 2, 2013.
Call it like it is Tim Bricker…. It’s a proposed ObamaCare Medicaid Expansion.
One of biggest impacts of “ObamaCare” is the law's expansion of Medicaid. A program designed to help the poor will now balloon to cover as many as 84 million Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that forcing the expansion of Medicaid (for states to restore coverage for low-income adults) is unconstitutional.
Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposal for “Arizona Medicaid expansion” — is a stunning about-face for a Republican who was one of the voices in the lawsuit filed (by 25 states) against ObamaCare that requires all Americans to buy health care insurance. The proposed Arizona “ObamaCare” Medicaid expansion is bad for taxpayers, bad for freedom and ultimately bad for Arizona’s health.
Cerulean posted at 8:21 am on Sun, Mar 3, 2013.
Mean while, Arizona continues to pay the salary of Attorney General Horne who likes to spend his lunch hour in the mistress parking lot ramming into other peoples cars. Then hiding like the sloth he is.
mnjcpa posted at 10:02 am on Sun, Mar 3, 2013.
cerulean - of course there's NEVER been a democrat that has been morally corrupt. I distinctly recall a President that ruined a young woman's life and LIED to the public about it and your party props himself up as a statesman and has the gall to talk about a `war on women.` But of course that's okay by you Cerulean, because he is a democrat. Again, you demonstrate your myopic view.
Brewer lost me on this decision.
sockratties posted at 9:51 am on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
The economy locally may improve but spending public money never improves the economic health of the country. It’s our money to start with. It’s like paying your kids to mow the lawn. Your lawn may look better but there is no more money in your household than you started out with. Medicare is a redistribution of taxpayer money. Jobs should not be the bait in the trap. The decision needs to rest on if or if not the medical result is worth the investment. Using borrowed money and a money absorbing bureaucracy to achieve anything is more expensive than paying up front without circulating tax money through Washington to get it back to Arizona.
LiveInGilbert posted at 10:10 am on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
The economics and realities of healthcare seem lost by most of you - and the digression to morally corrupt politicians (this problem is definitively not party-specific as history has shown) is probably best-served for another debate. The medical result of having people with the ability to seek and obtain primary care, preventive care and urgent care outside of episodic, higher cost emergency room care (or acute episodes of care due to delay in any routine care because of no insurance) is well proven in modern medical research and literature. And the economics of providing the appropriate care in the lowest cost setting is pretty obvious. Last - soccratties you pay for it either way - if not covered via these programs you pay by the great hidden tax as your insurance rates rise as to cover the higher cost uncompensated care these people will go and get.
Bluepoet posted at 1:15 pm on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Attributing care, of any kind, to Jan Brewer, is akin to saying that a broken clock is right twice a day. This is the last thing she wanted, or rather, the second to the last thing she wanted. The choice, for her, was whether or not it would be administered by the state, or the federal, government. Mr. Bricker's delight is misguided--but then, admitting that a Democrat may have been responsible for the shot-in-the-arm to his business, would be bad for, er, business, right? Right?
Of course, it would also never occur to Mr. Bricker that, the reason his business was almost immune to the recession, was because it created more sickness and more misery--things that he profits from, every single day.
LiveInGilbert posted at 3:45 pm on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Actually Blue that's not really accurate regarding what her choice was. She could either sign up for AHCCCS/Medicaid expansion to receive the Federal dollars for our state's program - or not. If not, then Arizona would not receive those dollars and our current AHCCCS eligibility requirements would stay status quo ... and the number of people without any coverage would stay the same and the high percentage of uncompensated care provided at state hospitals would continue - putting several (mainly rural) at risk. Hospitals have not been immune to the recession - and hospitals don't order tests or procedures or do operations, doctors do.
Bluepoet posted at 8:16 am on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
That's why I qualified my statement to "almost" immune. Next you'll be telling me that hospitals are people, too. The fact remains that hospitals profit from human misery, even as the people within them try to alleviate and cure such misery. That's a fundamental flaw in our "healthcare" system. As long as the focus is profit, the doctors and nurses will be treating symptoms and not causes...and, that's also why the current trend to provide prevention programs will not work, either.
Bluepoet posted at 8:19 am on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
The profitability needs to come from results oriented care, not administrative oversight, insurance fraudulence, and drug dependence.
LiveInGilbert posted at 1:09 pm on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
OK Blue - in theory I think you and I are almost in sync in terms of what the healthcare system needs to do. A couple of points - no, hospitals aren't people but are really just bricks and mortar - with many people working inside to alleviate the human misery that exists from illness and/or injury. But yes - the economics of healthcare are if I do more I make more, and in healthcare the physician (not the the hospital) creates demand (via ordering tests, admitting to hospital, doing procedures, etc) further corrupting the economics - and, demand for healthcare is inelastic as related to price unlike other commodities...if you are bleeding, dying, in pain you don't care how much it costs.
LiveInGilbert posted at 1:13 pm on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
So yes - the incentives in they system need to reward those who have results that either keep people well/healthy or treat them appropriately, effectively and efficiently for their injury or illness. Depending on your view of how medicine should work in the US - I don't think that unless we go to a national healthcare system that eliminates the for profit nature of most current healthcare organizations such as hospitals and insurance companies and controls prices of pharmaceuticals and device makers, etc - then we never get there because there's TOO MUCH MONEY for all of them to make and give up