Eli Crane’s Tax Scam “Could Cripple Some of Arizona’s Rural Hospitals,” Increase Costs for “All Patients” [Cronkite News]

The original House version of the Big, Ugly Bill could force hundreds of at-risk rural hospitals to close, including five in Arizona.

Three hospitals – Page Hospital, Winslow Memorial Hospital, and Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center – are located in Crane’s district.

While the Senate version of the Big, Ugly Bill includes a temporary, insufficiently-funded “rural provider fund,” experts agree there is “no reason to believe this will stem the tide of hospital closures,” given the permanent, much deeper Medicaid cuts in the Senate bill.

DCCC Spokesperson Lindsay Reilly:
“Eli Crane would rather fund tax breaks for billionaires than keep hospitals in his own district open. It’s shameful – and Arizonans will fire him for it next year.”

In case you missed it…

• Large cuts to Medicaid in the massive tax and spending plan that Republicans are finalizing could deal a major blow to Arizona’s rural hospitals, threatening services for tens of thousands of residents.
• The version that narrowly passed the Senate Tuesday would lop $930 billion over the next decade, the biggest cut in the program’s history.
• The impact wouldn’t be confined to those forced off the state-federal program, because lost revenue from those patients would make it harder for some facilities to stay open.
• “What it’s going to do to rural health care in Arizona is destroying it,” said Neal Jenson, CEO of Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center in Globe, 70 miles east of Phoenix and the seat of rural Gila County.
• About a third of Cobre Valley’s patients are on Medicaid, he said, and “anytime you jeopardize a third of your payer base, you will have a significant impact.”
• The House plan, approved May 22, would cut $800 billion – enough to put five Arizona hospitals at risk of closing, according to an analysis from University of North Carolina researchers.
• In Arizona alone, rural hospitals stand to lose $1.2 billion over 10 years under the Senate version, according to estimates from the National Rural Health Association.
• Even those rural hospitals that stay open could be forced to cut back. People with private insurance would also face delayed emergency care or long drives for maternity care and other services.
• “It’s not just for Medicaid patients,” said Ann-Marie Alameddin, president and CEO of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association. “It’s for all patients.”
• A hospital in Pinetop-Lakeside in rural northeast Arizona told him it would have to close its obstetrics and gynecology services, he said, meaning that women in that area would “have to travel two or three hours to have a baby.”
• Medicaid cuts would hit rural hospitals especially hard because so many of their patients rely on the program.
• Most hospitals rely on patients with private insurance to break even. But rural hospitals don’t have enough of those patients to make up the difference, Alameddin said.
• Many [rural hospitals] are also the largest employer in a region, Alameddin said, and they are the “primary access point for health care for everybody in that community.”
• Jenson said Cobre Valley loses more money on obstetrics than on any other service, but it’s a 90-minute drive to the next nearest hospital with obstetrics.
• The proposed Medicaid cuts would make the “maternal health desert” in rural Arizona even worse, said Daniel Derksen, director of the Center for Rural Health at the University of Arizona

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