Ritz Questions Governor’s MED-Funding Power
Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz has sent a letter to area legislators asking them to take a hard look at how the governor distributes federal money that is supposed to reimburse publicly owned hospitals for uncompensated care.
In the letter, he notes that last year the Regional Medical Center at Memphis received only $34 million in supplemental payments from the state when it generated $84 million in federal reimbursements.
The majority of the money went to cover other state health care expenses, such as the TennCare program.
“The state that year kept $49.7 million of federally reimbursed MED billings for other state uses,” Ritz stated in the letter.
The commissioner, who is a member of the special MED Task Force that’s looking at ways to solve The MED’s financial woes, zeroed in on how this money is allocated at the committee’s first meeting and has not let up.
“How can you look at a taxpayer in Shelby County in the eye and say you should be paying more for The MED because the governor is not giving us what we should be given on our billings?” Ritz told The Daily News. “How do you do that? I’m not going there. I am going to continue to talk about this and raise it probably until I will be blue in the face.”
Federal and state laws currently give the governor discretion on how to distribute the money. Money funneled into TennCare eventually ends up being distributed to all hospitals throughout the state.
“There are a lot of hospitals in this state who get some assistance from this money that we should be getting,” Ritz said. “In other worlds, we have bills that are unpaid, and the state takes the money and gives it to other hospitals, public and private. We’ve got hospitals in Memphis – Baptist, Methodist and Saint Francis – that benefit from this stream of income to the state of Tennessee. That’s just ridiculous.”
Ritz sent the letter Monday with two sheets of figures showing how the federal money is distributed.
“It is not fair or equitable for The MED to be in its current financial condition for Shelby County government taxpayers to have to pay more than they currently pay ($27 million annually),” he concluded in the letter. “We understand that federal law and TennCare rules provide/allow the governor to exercise discretion for its use and allocations of these public hospital uncompensated care reimbursements from the federal government.
“However, the current situation is not fair or equitable to Memphis and Shelby taxpayers, citizens or voters.”
Interim Shelby County Mayor Joe Ford recently announced a commitment to come up with another $10 million in county funding for The MED. Ford said he believes the money can be found by cutting back other county programs without raising taxes.
Ritz said he is still looking to learn more about this proposal. Although $10 million may sound like a lot of money, The MED needs much more to continue operations.
“We’ve got some people who just want to focus on just the short-term solution,” Ritz said. “Frankly, I’d rather not. It seems to me if we can’t cure this situation on a year-to-year basis – in other words, find a stream of income that would provide for about (an additional) $30 million, maybe a little bit more, year-end, year-out – it’s kind of like putting a Band-Aid on a bone protruding from the arm. You might be hiding the broken bone, but you haven’t fixed it.”
Ritz said hospitals throughout the state are likely to oppose changing the current system.
“I’m not bullish on the political winds changing on our behalf,” he said. “But I do believe that, frankly, when you push a little bit and make rather transparent and public what is going on that some things happen. Some things do get changed.”
MED officials have said it needs $32 million more to support operations under its current financial straits. That funding situation could worsen if the state moves forward with additional budget cuts.
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