‘The result is not cost savings – it is cost shifting,’ Hospital CEO says

Washington D.C. – After Iowa Republicans unanimously voted to pass a bill that includes more than $500 billion in cuts to Medicaid, Washington County Hospitals and Clinics CEO Todd Patterson issued a warning about the catastrophic effects the cuts could bring, both to patients and their providers.

“When policymakers in Washington or state capitals slash Medicaid funding or narrow eligibility, they are turning off the oxygen for rural health care,” Patterson wrote in a guest column for the Gazette. “Unlike larger urban systems with diversified service lines and philanthropic cushions, we rely heavily on government payers. At WCHC, over 60 percent of our patients are covered by either Medicare or Medicaid.”

Medicaid provides health coverage for more than 700,000 Iowans a year. That’s over one in five people in the entire state and, as Patterson mentioned, that ratio becomes higher in rural areas making it even harder for rural hospitals to provide services for everyone.

Patterson goes on to warn Iowans about what these Medicaid cuts will mean for rural hospitals:

“Medicaid cuts come with a cost to the health of the community. When coverage is stripped or access is narrowed, patients delay care until it becomes an emergency. Chronic diseases go unmanaged. Mental health crises deepen. Preventable conditions become fatal. The result is not cost savings — it is cost shifting, often to emergency rooms, law enforcement, and social services that are already stretched thin.”