Our view: GAMC compromise no compromise — or fix

Compromise?

In trying to find a way to continue providing health care for the poorest of Minnesota’s poor, the Minnesota Legislature drafted a bill to designate 17 hospitals around the state, including Duluth’s St. Mary’s Medical Center, for indigent care.

No one is arguing the need to care for 32,000 patients who earn $8,000 or less a year and who have been covered under the state’s pricey and getting unsustainably pricier General Assistance Medical Care program, or GAMC.

But how is the bill a compromise, as it’s being touted?

It’s really just an exchange of one problem (figuring out how to cover the care costs for Minnesotans who need the public’s help) for another (dumping the financial burden onto private businesses, specifically St. Mary’s and the other designated medical facilities)?

The state, as it has done in the past, will provide cash reimbursements to help the hospitals cover their costs. But the amount is to shrink dramatically under the bill, from $20 million to $2 million. St. Mary’s stands to eat far more than the $8 million it lost last year in caring for GAMC patients.

And just who do you think will be made to make up that loss? The cost almost certainly will be passed on to patients who have insurance, causing premiums to go up — and causing some patients with insurance to go to a non-designated hospital instead.

The bill isn’t much of a compromise for GAMC patients, either. Living on less than $700 a month and, in many cases, suffering from mental and physical ailments that prevent employment, GAMC patients face great transportation challenges. With St. Mary’s the only hospital designated for them in all of Northeastern Minnesota, patients will be forced to travel to Duluth from as far away as the Iron Range just to make appointments. Unable to get here, many will forego care they urgently need. Some will wind up in emergency rooms instead, the costliest possible place to publicly provide health care.

Reps. Roger Reinert and Tom Huntley acknowledge that the so-called compromise bill “will not be good for SMDC,” as Huntley said, and that reimbursements from the state will be so low the bill’s strategy “won’t work.”

Yet both men inexplicably said this week they’ll vote for it. Why? Reinert and Huntley represent Duluth. St. Mary’s is one of our city’s most important employers.

Our city also is home to GAMC patients, the lawmakers and others might be quick to point out. True, but other health-care options exist for those who’ve been covered by GAMC, including the state’s MinnesotaCare program.

The lagging economy and the state’s near financial freefall demand being smarter about picking — on a case-by-case basis rather than by sweeping every patient into the same catch-all program like GAMC — the health-care option that best fits each patient.

The Legislature’s compromise bill is no compromise. And if it “won’t work,” why does it appear poised for passage?

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