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Healthcare Leaders Call for Some Medicaid Action

For the most part, the public knows the positions of each side in the battle over Medicaid expansion in Virginia—but what about the stakeholder organizations that provide services? They say they're caught in the middle and would like to see some legislative movement before key services—and even hospitals themselves—become casualties in the battle over how to fund healthcare. 

The Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association has launched a new public education campaign to explain the financial challenges that threaten access to hospitals. The group says on average, 60% of hospital patients are subsidized by Medicaid or Medicare, which reimburse providers at rates far below the true cost of care.

And many patients cannot pay their bills. While these leaders are not calling for Medicaid expansion, they say it's time for a dialog. Mark Merrill is president of Valley Health System.

“If it’s not traditional Medicaid expansion, some creative way that the two parties can come together and have a conversation about what can we do to increase the coverage expansion here. But at the same time, other cuts are occurring about sequestration – you heard about that – we hope that the public will talk with legislators about rolling back sequestration. Because that has had a terrible effect, not just on healthcare but also in the Commonwealth in regard to military services as well.”

He and many VHHA leaders say there's no magic bullet to fix their problems. But right now, many hospitals are considering—or have already cut—some services to stay afloat, and that still may not be enough to prevent some of them from closing altogether.

One-third of Virginia’s acute care hospitals had negative operating margins in 2013.  In rural Virginia, 17 of 37 acute care hospitals operated in the red that year.

Tommie McNeil is a State Capitol reporter who has been covering Virginia and Virginia politics for more than a decade. He originally hails from Maryland, and also doubles as the evening anchor for 1140 WRVA in Richmond.
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