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We’re all for President Bush and whichever presidential candidate gets elected in November getting rid of wasteful federal programs. Any peek at the Golden Fleece Awards, which over the years have included everything from surfing subsidies to TV watching lessons, or the list of pork-barrel spending — the $4 billion per mile Big Dig project in Boston is a notorious example — would result in dozens of worthy choices for the budget ax. Rural health care should not be among the targets.
The news that Bush’s proposed budget cuts would impact Grande Ronde Hospital in particular and rural health care in general is distressing. It’s especially mind boggling when you consider the shaky status of health clinics in Union and Elgin, both reeling from a pull back of Oregon Health & Science University support. Rural health care needs federal support now more than ever.
The proposed cuts come at a time when about one in nine Oregonians still have no health insurance. It’s an injustice that any full-time worker should be denied access to some form of health insurance.
The president’s budget proposal would eliminate Rural Hospital Flexibility grants, which help hospitals in rural areas qualify for higher payments from Medicare. The president’s budget proposal also would eliminate $48 million of rural health outreach grants, which fund checkups, hospice care and other heath services to rural areas.
Bush’s proposed health care cuts would cost Grande Ronde Hospital about $120,000 a year, said CEO Jim Mattes. That’s small in proportion to the hospital’s $40 million annual budget, but represents the difference between positive and negative cash flow, Mattes said. If the proposals were adopted, “it would impact our ability to afford new things, especially new technology,” Mattes said.
The proposal, if adopted, would hurt health care without getting at what is a much bigger problem — a broken health care delivery system. The Congressional Budget Office estimates Medicare and Medicaid spending will increase from $621 billion in 2007 to $1.3 trillion in 2018. Restoring Medicare and Medicaid solvency will involve some pain to taxpayers, but health care needs to be high on our national priority list, not something we think about only after the crisis.
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Opinion 
