Pax-salon Mailing List: Conversational SAlon (explanation of salon)

[Patty Guerrero (pattypax]

Hi,   I received this from Diane Peterson, Green Party member.  It has to do 
with the salon for tomorrow night which you already received.  It is just more 
information to gather before hearing David Feinwachs.    

Patty

Begin forwarded message:

> 
> In my advocacy for guaranteed health care for all (known as one-payer health 
> care, or single-payer health care), I have pushed for accountability of 
> taxpayer dollars which our state government hands over to HMOs to pay for the 
> care of low-income (Medicaid) patients.  Currently, there is a shocking lack 
> of accountability . . . our government simply accepts the word of the 
> corporations that they are spending our tax dollars efficiently.  The State 
> of Minnesota is not sufficiently inspecting that Medicaid patients are 
> receiving quality, standard care, since the State does not demand the 
> receipts for their care.  Let me repeat, independent audits which examine 
> receipts to verify the cost and type of care the HMOs claim they deliver to 
> Medicaid patients are not collected and reviewed by government accountants.  
> This is unacceptable.  A reputable group of independent auditors from the 
> Segal company testified to the Minnesota Legislature in April about this 
> unacceptable situation, and put their evidence and conclusions in a written 
> report.  The Segal report indicates several hundred million dollars should be 
> clawed back from the HMOs.  And this only pertains to a few years of Medicaid 
> funding.  The State has handed over money to the HMOs for Medicaid patients 
> for more years than were reviewed by the Segal experts.  Neither the Governor 
> nor the Legislature has tried to recover our money from the HMOs.  How 
> negligent!  It appears that state government officials are unconcerned about 
> taxpayers getting ripped off by HMOs.     
>  
> A good friend, a Ramsey County taxpayer like me, enlisted me to go with her 
> to visit her Ramsey County Commissioner, Raphael Ortega, to discover how 
> Medicaid money is handled in Ramsey County.  She and I, plus two other County 
> residents in Commissioner Ortega's district, visited him on June 5 about this 
> issue.  We learned from him that the County gives $1.7 a year to Health 
> Partners to operate Regions Hospital, which used to be a County-run hospital. 
>  Commissioner Ortega, who is on the board of Regions Hospital, told us there 
> is no lease between the County and Health Partners. Instead, he said, there 
> is “a long-standing agreement.”  However, shortly after our meeting with him, 
> we obtained a copy of the lease which the County has for the operation of 
> Regions Hospital.  In it, there is express language saying that the County is 
> not obligated to pay any taxpayer money to the hospital.  Instead, Regions is 
> obligated to provide $3.37 million annually to the County.  So why is my 
> County tax money being given to Health Partners?  $1.7 million per year?  The 
> situation in Ramsey County appears to be related to the lack of strict 
> government oversight and accountability rampant at the state government 
> level.  
>  
> In fact, I had approached my Ramsey County Commissioner, Victoria Reinhardt, 
> in May, asking her to intervene on my behalf to get Governor Dayton to take 
> action to recover the hundreds of millions of dollars the independent 
> auditors had detailed in their report to the Legislature in April.  I put my 
> request to the Governor in writing, and he never responded.  I figured 
> Commissioner Reinhardt would be able to get Governor Dayton’s attention and a 
> response.  She sent him a letter asking about his plan to recover the HMO 
> “overpayments.”  The response that Commissioner Reinhardt's got back did not 
> come from the Governor.  It came from the State Commissioner who is supposed 
> to oversee and regulate the HMO contracts for Medicaid patients. It totally 
> evaded the question of what will be done to get our taxpayer money back.  
> This is unacceptable.  Taxpayers have a right to demand that what is ours 
> goes where it belongs, into our governmental budgets, not into the pockets of 
> corporations.  This has aggrieved me so intensely that I gladly shared my 
> indignation with KSTP TV today. 
>  
> I welcome fellow Minnesota taxpayers to share your indignation with the 
> Governor and your State Legislators.  Ramsey County residents may want to 
> object to County Commissioners giving any more money to Health Partners in 
> 2014:  the County budget for 2014 is being drawn up now in July and August.
>  
> For accountability,
>  
> Diane J. Peterson
> White Bear Lake, Minnesota
> birch7 [at] comcast.net