From Your Senator

Our governor, in his zeal to leave a legacy before turning in his Helena parking permit, is single-handedly creating more growth in state government. He strategically waited until legislators left for good then drafted a bid request for a new health clinic to serve 11,000 Montana state workers and families in Helena.

These folks deserve prompt and proper health care. But the state insurance benefit already provides for it, with the additional flexibility to select their own providers for themselves and their dependents.

There is now momentum shoving the plan forward. Bids have been received from large health care companies as far away as Tennessee, North Carolina and Connecticut. The governor says, “it’s a model of health care deployed by the largest corporations.”

But government service is not a large corporation, where bigger is better. It’s individuals who should be given a choice where they obtain their health care. State employment is sometimes short-term, and those folks may want to retain medical relationships they’ve already established. What happens then — vouchers? It could get very complicated. And shifting doctors into this medical group will strain the remaining doctors who depend on insured patients to even out below-cost reimbursements for Medicare/Medicaid patients.

It appears our short-term governor wants to implement a form of centralized health care, regardless of the uncertain future of the Patient Affordability Act.

The plan is to break ground soon, tapping the $55 million in reserves from premiums paid in, part by the state and part by state workers. I agree with House Speaker Mike Milburn who nailed the perfect solution, saying, “If there are such large reserves, the premiums paid by employees should be lowered,” we should not spend the money to construct another state-run expensive edifice full of more salaried employees.

The governor claims salaried doctors will be more efficient, ordering fewer expensive tests. As a board member of St. Joseph Medical Center, I’ve observed that current health care providers already operate in a competitive environment and are diligently trying to find safe ways to reduce unnecessary testing to lower costs.

It’s no surprise cooler heads want to delay this rush toward a new publicly-funded facility. If it’s a good idea, it can withstand fiscally-conservative Republican scrutiny.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and questions: Senator Carmine Mowbray, 883-4677; carminemowbray@gmail.com.