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3/16/2007
When more is less
A pair of our Fox Valley legislators have thrown the bed pan at the governor’s claims that if hospitals pay more taxes (a 1% Hospital Tax) it will result in INCREASED net revenues for those hospitals. Hmmm.
The governor makes that weird-sounding claim because he says the hospital tax will push hospitals to charge more, and as a result, more will be reimbursed by the federal government. Tricky at best.
Senator Ellis (R-Neenah) and Representative Kaufert (R-Neenah) say “Follow the money. This tax hits the Fox Valley twice. In the area of health care, it picks the pockets of citizens who already pay for health insurance to pay for the uninsured elsewhere. In the overall budget picture, it is extracting supposed health-care dollars to pay for budget sins of the past.”
Hmmm. Sounds odious. Actually, it sounds like the fund transfer shell game we’ve talked about here more than once. Mincing no words, Ellis says it’s “disingenuous, if not downright dishonest for the governor to claim that these new taxes are dedicated toward funding health care.”
To put the money where their mouths are, Sen. Ellis and Rep. Kaufert created a graph that projects dollars lost if a Hospital Tax is ever imposed.
The first column, “Hospital Tax,” is the amount of extra taxes that would be levied over two years if the 1% tax should go into affect. The second column is the maximum increase in federal reimbursement each hospital might expect. And then the third column shows the resulting net loss to each hospital over the 2-year, 2007-2009 state budget period.
New Tax $’s Extra Federal $’s Net Rev. Dec.
St. Elizabeth’s, Appleton $4,220,762 $1,813,185 $2,407,577
Appleton Medical Ctr 5,752,549 1,874,235 3,878,314
Theda Clark, Neenah 5,406,343 934,065 4,472,278
Children’s Hosp., Neenah 569,484 0 569,484
Totals $15,949,138 $4,621,485 $11,327,653
This is complicated stuff. I can just see Senator Ellis hard at work at his chalk board, trying to explain it all. The legislators’ press release says “the governor’s numbers [for extra federal dollars coming to Wisconsin as a result of the new Hospital Tax] were based on an unrealistic best-case scenario that ignored… federal rules governing medical assistance.” When the federal rules are applied, hospitals funded more significantly with private-pay patients lose out substantially.
It’s a new tax. It results in raids on the general fund and doesn’t solve Wisconsin’s continued deficit spending problem. Senator Ellis says the solution to our budget problem is effectively prioritizing programs. He goes on record, naming those priorities and suggesting that programs falling outside those priorities may have to be suspended for a time. That approach is tough and will require courage –and unity – on the part of more than just a couple of Fox Valley legislators.
COMMENTS
Just think of all the State & Municipal workers who use hospital services using Taxpayer funded health insurance. Just how many times can we be taxed on earnings? George Orwell must be mad he never received the Pulitzer Prize for 1984.
Richard Parins (Fri Mar 16 10:08:30 2007)
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