Affordable Health Care Now

By Patrick M. Egan

Due in part to SVMH's excessive high charges, Monterey County ranks as one of the two most expensive counties for health care in all of California. SVMH's rates are often at least 30% higher than those charged at many other hospitals to privately insured patients in the tri-county area and northern California - including Stanford Medical Center and UCSF Hospital!

SVMH refuses to provide discounts to statewide provider networks. This has resulted in many insurance plans dropping SVMH from their network, forcing patients to travel to out-of-the-Salinas Valley hospitals in Santa Cruz, San Jose, Stanford, and San Francisco. This is not right, and needs to change!

Local employers are being negatively impacted by SVMH's high costs as some statewide insurance providers "regionalize" rates and charge more to Monterey County to compensate for excessive hospital costs. This results in few employers offering health coverage or passing the higher costs on to employees. This is not right, and needs to change!

Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital is a wealthy institution. It has a $200 cash reserve. It can afford to pay its top administrators lavish salaries (oftne greater than that of the Governor of California. It has spent tens of millions of dollars on building projects over the past decade (for example, the Abbott Street facility and the Parking Garage complex) while failing to address the state-mandated requirement to retrofit the hospital. It spends freely on slike printed advertising, television ads (especially on such high-priced Sporting events as the Super Bowl and Baseball playoffs.

An atmosphere of oppenness and transparency needs to be brought to the SVMH Boardroom. Board meetings need to be held during the evenings to provide maximum opportunity for commmunity attendance and input, instead of during the mid-afternoon when few working people can attend. Notices of Board Meetings, Agendas for Upcoming Meetings, Minutes from Previous Meetings, and Financial Oveview Statements need to be placed on the SVMH website and in a prominent location near the Main Lobby for the public to inspect and scrutize. This culture shift is needed, and its implementation is already long overdue!

All this is done at the expense of keeping SVMH rates more affordable. The actions and SVMH's priorities (especially its financial ones) need to change immediately! If elected, Pat Egan will work hard to make sure that it happens immediately.