New Public Hospital Commissioner questions need for public hospital district: Is anyone noticing?Next Public Hospital District 1 Public Board Meeting: Monday, January 7, 2008 Approximately half of Washington State's 98 hospitals are within public hospital districts. Most of the rest are run on a not-for-profit basis. This represents a healthcare market that could be quite profitable for private healthcare businesses if it were taken out of the public domain. I believe that our state's public hospital districts are in danger of being opened up to private interests and that an effort to dissolve at least one of these districts, perhaps as a start to dissolving others, is on its way in my district, Public Hospital District 1, the oldest in the state. In researching an article I wrote in October, Challengers offer improved oversight, I don't know how I missed at least two major articles (1, 2) in the Seattle Times documenting that Anthony Hemstad, one of the people running for the board of PHD 1, had for over a year been engaged in an effort to reduce the size of the district in order to serve the interests of his city. One of the people mentioned along with Hemstad in these articles was activist Chris Clifford, who was quoted in a June, 2006 Seattle Times article (2) as advocating that the district be 'killed' like a dinosaur. Senator Pam Roach, also quoted in these articles, questioned the need for public health districts in urban areas and stated an intention to sponsor legislation to make it easier to reduce the size of the districts. She did so last session, with SB 5818. There is a companion bill in the House, cosponsored by my Democratic Representative, Pat Sullivan, among others. I see no Seattle Times or PI articles run during Hemstad's campaign that connected all these dots, although after the election reporter Karen Johnson did run this article: Need for hospital district questioned. Today, two Seattle Times articles report critically on actions of the outgoing board without mentioning the possible conflict of interest of the new commissioner: Valley Medical Center's ethics policy could limit criticism, and Valley Board Catches Bad Code.
The second Seattle Times article linked to above is a guest column by Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis, Senator Cheryl Pflug, and Representative Christopher Hurst. It turns out that the outgoing hospital board in its final meeting passed a contract extension for its embattled chief administrator as well as an ethics policy that places some very questionable limitations on investigations into the hospital operations. Files of these two documents were provided to me earlier by Mr. Hemstad: Valley Medical Center Code of Ethics, and Roodman Contract Extension. Lewis, Hurst, and Pflug rightly, I think, cite those documents as evidence that the hospital board members may not have been serving the interests of the public hospital district. But they and the Seattle Times reporter leave it up to the reader to discover from past articles that there is, with an incoming commissioner, what many would consider to be an even more serious public interest issue. I'm puzzled by own my failure to find those key Seattle Times articles when I did my previous research. I'm puzzled by the failure of the Seattle Times to report on this threat to our public hospital district. And I'm puzzled that Commissioners Carole Anderson and Gary Kohlwes, in their campaigns to hold on to their commission seats late last year, didn't notify the public of this potential threat to the continued existence of the district. If they had, Carole Anderson would almost certainly have held onto her seat, which she lost by a razor-thin margin to Anthony Hemstad. As Maple Valley's City Manager, new Commissioner Hemstad courted other healthcare investment into the Public Hospital District area In May, 2006, PHD 1 residents voted on a ballot measure whether to approve that annexation bid. I live in that hospital district and noticed the intense negative coverage of the annexation proposal by the conservative King County Journal. The ballot measure failed by an unprecedented margin: 94% voted against it. On May 11, shortly before the annexation vote, Seattle Times reporter Sonia Krishnan quoted Anthony Hemstad as opposing the annexation. He also noted: "There are enough facilities that want to open here that are not asking for public subsidies." On May 27, 2006, shortly after the annexation proposal failed, Hemstad was quoted by the same reporter as saying said the city would be talking within the next two weeks with four other hospital providers -- which ones in particular he wasn't at liberty to disclose -- about bringing more services to the region. "We had been looking to bolster health care in Maple Valley before the vote and we're still looking to do so," Hemstad said. "This is a very good market for a hospital to invest in. We're extremely confident we'll be making some announcements soon." On June 8th, the same reporter quoted Hemstad as mulling over the difficulty of deannexation. On 12/16/07, shortly after Anthony Hemstad was elected to the board of PHD1, he was quoted in the Seattle Times (3) as stating that it's hard to see any benefits for a public hospital district in an urban area. Clifford and Senator Roach both backed the election of Anthony Hemstad to the board of PHD1. PHD 1: A well-run hospital Is it right to run for election to an agency you may want to dissolve without notifying voters that this is your intention? Different hospital models: public, private, and non-profit: Does it matter which one? In a phone conversation with me earlier this month, Hemstad corrected an impression that he was calling for privatization of Valley Medical Center. He said that he believes in the non-profit model for hospitals and doesn't see the private market as offering all the answers for health care. He did not dispute that he questions whether we need Valley Medical Center to continue to be run as a public hospital district, although he said that he expects healthcare issues to be a major part of the 2008 elections and wouldn't expect any major changes to current operations to be proposed before we find out what new policies may be put into place in the near future. If we PHD 1 is replaced by a non-profit hospital, will that make any difference? I strongly suspect that, with the dissolution of PHD 1, we would discover that commercial healthcare companies are lined up to move into the market much more quickly than a nonprofit public hospital would be able to be organized. Such an outcome would be tantamount to privatizing the district. Even if Valley Medical were converted to a private non-profit, that model would still take away from the public the right to oversight of how the hospital is governed, what capital project are built, and so on. Healthcare ain't free Healthcare is not free and, ultimately, the consumer pays. When private industry takes its cut of the profits of our healthcare, we pay more because we are, ultimately, paying for those profits, as well. Medicare and Medicaid, insurance for public employees, subsidized technology development, and subsidized capital improvements all are paid for with federal tax dollars. Switching from a public hospital district to private care will simply remove public oversight from the services we pay for and cost us more. If we think that it is unlikely we'll lose our public hospital districts, we should think again. Here, for example, is a recent report of a California district which is being privatized right now: Group questions hospital deal. A long history of private industry fighting the right of consumers to control their public healthcare As I sat in the waiting room, reading Crowley's book and thinking about the privatization threat to our PHD 1, this quote caught my attention. It's from Dr. Michael Shadid, who founded the first group health cooperative in the country and helped to found ours: "private ownership of hospitals is wrong and detrimental to the interests of mankind, physically, morally, and financially." A few minutes later, looking up from the book, I saw walking in through the door of the clinic a woman I had met for the first time at the Anthony Hemstad's campaign victory party. I wrote Mr. Hemstad with an account of that experience and followed it up with an attempt to pull at his heartstrings by saying that perhaps it was a sign! to meet someone from his victory party just as I was reading about the evils of private hospitals from the era when PHD 1 was established. Please, I asked him, look into the proposals for healthcare insurance being developed right now by Senator Karen Keiser, State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kriedler and others. Please don't privatize our hospital. The health of our bodies should not be "marketized", I wrote. (I think the term I needed there was "commodified" rather than marketized.) Mr. Hemstad, who has been very responsive to my emails so far didn't answer that one, and I don't blame him as it was perhaps a bit, well, unconventional (Note, 1/7/08: As reported above, Mr. Hemstad did explain in a later conversation that he was not arguing for privatization of Valley Medical Center). I hope he heard it the message behind it, however, that his constituents are counting on him to represent our best interests. Advocates for dissolving urban public health districts maintain they are no longer needed because we have evolved past our urban roots. But Group Health Cooperative was not established because people lived in a rural area. It was founded because farmers and workers were (quote from Crowley's book) "fed up with the scant supply and high cost of health care for working people." That same need informed the formation of the public hospital districts, which came into being at the same time. Both consumer-led endeavors were robustly opposed by private, for-profit healthcare. Unions and the Grange teamed up to establish the Group Health Cooperative so that healthcare would be affordable to them. Because it was their health at stake and their money, and because they had to plan ahead for costs, the cooperative practiced conservative medicine: high on prevention and low on the kinds of unnecessary interventions and medications that private industry relies upon to raise costs and profits. This model and the public hospital district model, together, influenced the evolution of healthcare in this region and has served us well. Collaboration between Group Health and university, public, and non-profit hospitals, puttting the lessons learned in the provision of cooperative and public health provision into operation in non-profit organizations. This has helped our region keep health costs lower than the national average. If PHD 1 has faltered, it has faltered because voters and health consumers in this area have taken their eye off the ball and because some of the people who we entrusted the administration of the district made mistakes. That is no reason for private interests to be able to step in and take control of our healthcare away from the community. NOTES
New Public Hospital Commissioner questions need for public hospital district: Is anyone noticing? | 9 comments (9 topical)
New Public Hospital Commissioner questions need for public hospital district: Is anyone noticing? | 9 comments (9 topical)
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By WA Spirit Matters (2 comments) Related Links+ Monday, January 7, 2008+ Challenger s offer improved oversight + SB 5818 + Need for hospital district questioned + Valley Medical Center's ethics policy could limit criticism + Valley Board Catches Bad Code + Valley Medical Center Code of Ethics + Roodman Contract Extension + quoted Anthony Hemstad + associated with Senator Roach + Washington Association of Public Hospital Districts + Group questions hospital deal + To Serve the Greatest Number: A History of Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound + Need for Hospital District Questioned + More on Health + Also by noemie maxwell Washblog RSS FeedsPolitical ContactsLocal MediaCoastal/Grays HarborAberdeen Daily World Chinook Observer Montesano Vidette Pacific County Press Willapa Harbor Herald KXRO 1320 AM Olympic Peninsula Peninsula Daily News Bremerton Sun Bremerton Chronicle Gig Harbor Gateway Port Orchard Independent Port Townsend Leader North Kitsap Herald Squim Gazette Central Kitsap Reporter Business Examiner KONP 1450 AM Sound and Islands Anacortes American Bainbridge Review Voice Of Bainbridge San Juan Journal The Islands' Sounder Whidbey NewsTimes South Whidbey Record Stanwood/Camano News Vashon Beachcomber Voice Of Vashon KLKI 1340 AM North Puget Sound Bellingham Herald The Northern Light Everett Herald Skagit Valley Herald Lynden Tribune The Enterprise Snohomish County Tribune Snohomish County Business Journal The Monroe Monitor The Edmonds Beacon KGMI 790 AM KELA 1470 AM KRKO 1380 AM Central Puget Sound King County Journal Issaquah Press Mukilteo Beacon Voice of the Valley Federal Way Mirror Bothell/Kenmore Reporter Kirkland courier Mercer Island Reporter Woodinville Weekly Greater Seattle Seattle PI Seattle Times KOMO TV 4 KIRO TV 7 KING 5 TV KTBW TV 22 KCTS 9 UW Daily The Stranger Seattle Weekly Capitol Hill Times Madison Park Times Seattle Journal of Commerce NW Asian Weekly West Seattle Herald North Seattle Herald-Outlook South Seattle Star Magnolia News Beacon Hill News KIRO 710 AM KOMO AM 1000 KEXP 90.3 FM KUOW 94.9 FM KVI 570 AM South Puget Sound The Columbian Longview Daily News Nisqually Valley News Lewis County News The Reflector Eatonville Dispatch Tacoma News Tribune Tacoma Weekly Puyallup Herald Enumclaw Courier-Herald The Olympian KAOS 89.3 FM KCPQ 13 KOWA FM 106.5 UPN 11 Cascade/Okanogan Ellensburg Daily Record Levenworth Echo Cle Elum Tribune Snoqualmie Valley Record Methow Valley News Lake Chelan Mirror Omak chronicle The Newport Miner Spokane/Palouse The Spokesman-Review KREM 2 TV Spokane KXLY News 4 Spokane KHQ 6 Spokane KSPS Spokane Statesman-Examiner Othello Outlook Cheney Free Press Camas PostRecord The South County sun White Salmon Enterprise Palouse Boomerang Columbia Basin Herald Grand Coulee Star Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Yakima Herald-Republic KIMA 29 Yakima KAPP TV 35 Yakima KYVE Yakima Wenatchee World Tri-City Herald TVEW TV 42 Tri-cities KTNW Richland KEPR 19 Pasco Daily Sun News Prosser Record-Bulletin KTCR 1340 AM KWSU Pullman Moscow-Pullman Daily News |