HCMC stands to lose up to $109 million with GAMC elimination

Minnesota legislators will visit Hennepin County Medical Center Friday to discuss the facility’s potential loss of $43 million to $109 million with Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s elimination of general assistance medical care, which provides health care for more than 30,000 Minnesotans.

"I want to be clear:The decision to drop health care for over 30,000 Minnesotans was immoral and unacceptable to the people of Minnesota," Rep. Paul Thissen (DFL-Minneapolis), chairman of the House Health and Human Services Policy Committee (and a DFL hopeful for governor) said in a statement. "Nonetheless, the governor is standing by his decision."

In May, Pawlenty line-item vetoed GAMC, eliminating $381 million from the 2010-11 biennial budget but also cutting access to health care to singleadult Minnesotans without children, including veterans, senior citizens, the homelessand the mentally ill.

In addition to HCMC’s loss estimate of $43 million to $109 million, Regions Hospital in St. Paul has said that it will be forced to cut its budget by $46 million, or 10 percent of its gross revenue.

Thissen and other members of his committee toured state hospitals this week to discuss "alternative ways to meet the needs" of those now on GAMC, which stands to be wiped out entirely next March. Legislators visited hospitals in Thief River Falls, Detroit Lakes, Brainerd, Bemidji and Cambridge, and threeTwin Cities hospitals, including HCMC.

Thissen said the purpose of thehospital visits was not to "revisit" Pawlenty’s decision to ax GAMC: "Instead, someone needs to step up and figure out how we can work together to make sure our fellow Minnesotans have access to health care."

Other legislators besides those on the Health and Human Services Committee have been invited to the HCMC meeting, which will begin at 10 a.m.

No Responses to “HCMC stands to lose up to $109 million with GAMC elimination”

1. Anonymous Says:
   July 9th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

   Our community saved no money by unallotment of maintenance funding for the 35W bridge in 2007. Total costs of the bridge failure were at or near one billion dollars, or between 500 and 1000 times the predicted maintenance costs: http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2007/09/15/bad-public-policy/ . Twelve years working in child protection watching at risk children not receive needed health care and the problems they bring with them as they mature have proved to me the direct correlation between physical/mental well being and dysfunctional citizens they become (costing our community 500 to 1000 times more than helping them when they are young).

   Are we really this mean and mathmatically challenged? It is much more expensive to let bridges fall into the river and people fall into decline in health and mental health.

   It is the reason America houses 25% of the world’s prison population and it also explains why 25% of America’s high school graduates are functionally illiterate at the time of graduation (and it is why we have such a high drop out rate).

   This is the same politics that puts homeless people on buses to Denver with one way tickets (1500 of them).

   Let’s show the rest of the world that we are a kinder gentler people and end this 21st century bigotry.

   We will all be the better for it.

   http://www.invisiblechildren.org