(01-26-2015 08:45 PM)BAMANBLAZERFAN Wrote: [ -> ]For those who said the county should not be in the hospital business, I'm inclined to agree. It was too big a project for one county to maintain. The Cooper Green Hospital should have been operated as a STATE hospital just like the Children's Hospital near it. Why is the Children's Hospital bragged about while the Mercy hospital was vilified when BOTH are designed to treat the same needy people, just in different age groups?
There should be such a public hospital in every major city in Alabama so that one does not have to live in just certain places to get the health care to maintain one's life. As long as our state is willing to accept an early death for those who don't matter to us as a people, then it will continue as is. Has anyone made a fuss about the Alabama rural auto death toll being twice the national average due to scarcity of rural hospitals? If it has, i missed it.
The Alabama Legislature passed a law and forced the County in the health care business. Now the county no longer runs a hospital and collects the money for the hospital, but stiffs UAB and Baptist Princeton on the bills.
(01-26-2015 08:45 PM)BAMANBLAZERFAN Wrote: [ -> ]For those who said the county should not be in the hospital business, I'm inclined to agree. It was too big a project for one county to maintain. The Cooper Green Hospital should have been operated as a STATE hospital just like the Children's Hospital near it. Why is the Children's Hospital bragged about while the Mercy hospital was vilified when BOTH are designed to treat the same needy people, just in different age groups?
There should be such a public hospital in every major city in Alabama so that one does not have to live in just certain places to get the health care to maintain one's life. As long as our state is willing to accept an early death for those who don't matter to us as a people, then it will continue as is. Has anyone made a fuss about the Alabama rural auto death toll being twice the national average due to scarcity of rural hospitals? If it has, i missed it.
Children's is a private non-profit. It is not a state institution.
(01-26-2015 08:51 PM)nicknitro19 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 08:45 PM)BAMANBLAZERFAN Wrote: [ -> ]For those who said the county should not be in the hospital business, I'm inclined to agree. It was too big a project for one county to maintain. The Cooper Green Hospital should have been operated as a STATE hospital just like the Children's Hospital near it. Why is the Children's Hospital bragged about while the Mercy hospital was vilified when BOTH are designed to treat the same needy people, just in different age groups?
There should be such a public hospital in every major city in Alabama so that one does not have to live in just certain places to get the health care to maintain one's life. As long as our state is willing to accept an early death for those who don't matter to us as a people, then it will continue as is. Has anyone made a fuss about the Alabama rural auto death toll being twice the national average due to scarcity of rural hospitals? If it has, i missed it.
The Alabama Legislature passed a law and forced the County in the health care business. Now the county no longer runs a hospital and collects the money for the hospital, but stiffs UAB and Baptist Princeton on the bills.
So the county does not reimburse UAB or Princeton in any manner? Don't know, just asking.
(01-26-2015 08:45 PM)BAMANBLAZERFAN Wrote: [ -> ]For those who said the county should not be in the hospital business, I'm inclined to agree. It was too big a project for one county to maintain. The Cooper Green Hospital should have been operated as a STATE hospital just like the Children's Hospital near it. Why is the Children's Hospital bragged about while the Mercy hospital was vilified when BOTH are designed to treat the same needy people, just in different age groups?
There should be such a public hospital in every major city in Alabama so that one does not have to live in just certain places to get the health care to maintain one's life. As long as our state is willing to accept an early death for those who don't matter to us as a people, then it will continue as is. Has anyone made a fuss about the Alabama rural auto death toll being twice the national average due to scarcity of rural hospitals? If it has, i missed it.
How do you find enough doctors and nurses to man a hospital in the middle of ******* nowhere? You have great ideas all the time, but no realistic solutions.
(01-26-2015 08:54 PM)BlazerFire Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 08:51 PM)nicknitro19 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 08:45 PM)BAMANBLAZERFAN Wrote: [ -> ]For those who said the county should not be in the hospital business, I'm inclined to agree. It was too big a project for one county to maintain. The Cooper Green Hospital should have been operated as a STATE hospital just like the Children's Hospital near it. Why is the Children's Hospital bragged about while the Mercy hospital was vilified when BOTH are designed to treat the same needy people, just in different age groups?
There should be such a public hospital in every major city in Alabama so that one does not have to live in just certain places to get the health care to maintain one's life. As long as our state is willing to accept an early death for those who don't matter to us as a people, then it will continue as is. Has anyone made a fuss about the Alabama rural auto death toll being twice the national average due to scarcity of rural hospitals? If it has, i missed it.
The Alabama Legislature passed a law and forced the County in the health care business. Now the county no longer runs a hospital and collects the money for the hospital, but stiffs UAB and Baptist Princeton on the bills.
So the county does not reimburse UAB or Princeton in any manner? Don't know, just asking.
Nope and the millions and growing the County owes Baptist Health is spurring the merger with Brookwood and the transition to for profit.
(01-26-2015 09:26 PM)blazers9911 Wrote: [ -> ]How do you find enough doctors and nurses to man a hospital in the middle of ******* nowhere? You have great ideas all the time, but no realistic solutions.
Not to put words on someone's keyboard, but I read that as yet another indictment of Alabama's competence relative to other states. They somehow manage to find enough rural doctors and nurses to kill only half as many people as Alabama.
I see this as directly related to our football/governance issue: all result from Alabama's undemocratic government controlled by the spawn of UAT's Machine, whether by design or simple incompetence.
(01-26-2015 09:32 PM)58-56 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 09:26 PM)blazers9911 Wrote: [ -> ]How do you find enough doctors and nurses to man a hospital in the middle of ******* nowhere? You have great ideas all the time, but no realistic solutions.
I see this as directly related to our football/governance issue: all result from Alabama's undemocratic government controlled by the spawn of UAT's Machine, whether by design or simple incompetence.
Ding ding!
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, when you start thinking about all of it, it all starts coming together...
BBF is not making much of an exaggeration when he says that there is a very large group of people who are not cared about at all, in any kind of circumstance, other than being quietly subjugated.
(01-26-2015 09:32 PM)58-56 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 09:26 PM)blazers9911 Wrote: [ -> ]How do you find enough doctors and nurses to man a hospital in the middle of ******* nowhere? You have great ideas all the time, but no realistic solutions.
Not to put words on someone's keyboard, but I read that as yet another indictment of Alabama's competence relative to other states. They somehow manage to find enough rural doctors and nurses to kill only half as many people as Alabama.
I see this as directly related to our football/governance issue: all result from Alabama's undemocratic government controlled by the spawn of UAT's Machine, whether by design or simple incompetence.
Well I'm not going to sit here and argue that Alabama is competent in anything.
(01-26-2015 01:30 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ]I don't see why we don't bite the bullet and take the Medicaid money and take the tax increases we're going to get anyway, and end up with a population that can get medical care if they need it and a financially healthy UAB hospital
Because medicaid will literally do neither. Our compay only occassionally accepts medicaid patients on a case by case basis and we don't even bill medicaid because it costs more to do so than what you're reimbursed.
(01-27-2015 12:13 AM)LightEmUp70 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 01:30 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ]I don't see why we don't bite the bullet and take the Medicaid money and take the tax increases we're going to get anyway, and end up with a population that can get medical care if they need it and a financially healthy UAB hospital
Because medicaid will literally do neither. Our compay only occassionally accepts medicaid patients on a case by case basis and we don't even bill medicaid because it costs more to do so than what you're reimbursed.
I don't know what your company does, but UAB gets a good chunk of change from medicaid. This year, changes in medicaid reimbursement left the hospital with an anticipated 80 million dollar shortfall. Ideally, the increase in the number of medicaid patients was supposed to help cover that. But those patients still show up at UAB. Except instead of having a yearly office visit and taking a 10 dollars/ month blood pressure pill, they're landing in the ER where their stay is in the tens of thousands of dollars. And since they're not on medicaid, UAB gets stuck holding the bill. Which they make up by raising health care costs for everyone.
(01-27-2015 12:13 AM)LightEmUp70 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 01:30 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ]I don't see why we don't bite the bullet and take the Medicaid money and take the tax increases we're going to get anyway, and end up with a population that can get medical care if they need it and a financially healthy UAB hospital
Because medicaid will literally do neither. Our compay only occassionally accepts medicaid patients on a case by case basis and we don't even bill medicaid because it costs more to do so than what you're reimbursed.
I don't know what UAB's numbers are, but I was reading Children's 2013 annual report and 61% of their payments were from Medicaid.
As a non-profit/state institution, UAB is bearing the brunt of the lack of Medicaid because they have to provide charity care. With Medicaid expansion, at least that would be softened to some extent.
If any American is denied the needed medical care "on a case by case basis" or any other, it illustrates how completely our nation's healthcare is dominated by ability by someone to pay for it, not on level of need for a service. Good medical care , like good educational opportunities, is not cheap. The intent to punish the poorest Americans for being just that is not good for "the promotion of the general welfare" of the nation (that quote is from the Constitution).
How does a state get doctors, dentists, teachers, etc. to serve poor areas? The same way you get good coaches to live in Northport or Auburn, AL - you pay them well enough to make it worth while ( it doesn't take millions since they aren't coaches).
(01-27-2015 10:46 AM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ] (01-27-2015 12:13 AM)LightEmUp70 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-26-2015 01:30 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ]I don't see why we don't bite the bullet and take the Medicaid money and take the tax increases we're going to get anyway, and end up with a population that can get medical care if they need it and a financially healthy UAB hospital
Because medicaid will literally do neither. Our compay only occassionally accepts medicaid patients on a case by case basis and we don't even bill medicaid because it costs more to do so than what you're reimbursed.
I don't know what UAB's numbers are, but I was reading Children's 2013 annual report and 61% of their payments were from Medicaid.
As a non-profit/state institution, UAB is bearing the brunt of the lack of Medicaid because they have to provide charity care. With Medicaid expansion, at least that would be softened to some extent.
No it won't. The problem is not medicaid, but the one size fits all requirements in the new insurance plans. They could very easily make insurance more affordable by giving more options to consumers, but that makes too much sense.