| New reporting from the Des Moines Register details how the president and CEO of Southeastern Iowa’s Great River Health system “pressed” Mariannette Miller-Meeks on her vote for Medicaid cuts and “raised concerns about rural hospitals being forced to make tough calls while they already operate on thin or negative operating margins.”
Miller-Meeks’ response?
To say that hospitals were already “struggling for years with operating margins” and to defend her Medicaid cuts that are causing hospitals to sound the alarm.
DCCC Spokesperson Katie Smith:
“Mariannette Miller-Meeks has no excuses for her vote gutting rural health care funding but to say what everyone already knows: hospitals have been struggling, and she made things worse. Miller-Meeks’ jaw-dropping response couldn’t be more out of touch if she tried, and Iowans will hold her accountable for her cruelty.”
Key points from the Des Moines Register:
- ‘We’re trying to figure out what to do’ about Medicaid cuts
- “…a hospital administrator pressed Miller-Meeks on the nearly $1 trillion in estimated federal spending cuts to Medicaid the new law will usher in over a decade.”
- “Mike McCoy, president and CEO of the Great River Health system in southeastern Iowa, raised concerns about rural hospitals being forced to make tough calls while they already operate on thin or negative operating margins.”
- More than 40% of rural hospitals across the U.S. are operating in the red, according to health care analytics firm Chartis. McCoy put his hospital system among them.
- He said “we’re trying to figure out what to do” because more uninsured patients will seek more costly emergency care without having a way to pay for their treatment.
- Miller-Meeks said some hospitals have “been struggling for years with operating margins” and defended the law’s Medicaid changes, saying they preserve benefits for those who need them most.
- McCoy maintained that hospitals would have to care for a growing number of uninsured patients as a result of the law.
- The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the law will increase the number of uninsured Americans by 10 million over a decade.
- “I think there’s a lot of debate about what that will do or not do,” McCoy said. “Here’s what I know we’ll see. We’ll see more patients that don’t have insurance, so they’re going to be self-pay or no pay, and we’re going to see more charity care.”
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