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Hospital CEO worried about Washington ‘uncertainty’

Getman

SARANAC LAKE — Adirondack Health CEO Sylvia Getman woke up to what she said was some good news on Friday.

Just a few hours earlier, at a late-night session in Washington, Arizona Sen. John McCain cast the deciding vote that killed his party’s narrowly crafted Obamacare repeal bill.

“It took us by surprise, that’s for sure,” Getman said. “I was probably one of the happier people in Franklin and Essex counties that morning.”

Republican efforts to replace and repeal the Affordable Care Act fell flat several times last week. Key defections from the party led to the Senate decisively rejecting one proposal to simply erase much of Obama’s statute. A second amendment was defeated that would have scrapped it and substituted relaxed coverage rules for insurers, less generous tax subsidies for consumers and Medicaid cuts.

Finally, a bare-bones plan by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rolling back a few pieces of Obama’s law failed in a nail-biting 51-49 roll call early Friday. Three GOP senators joined all Democrats in rejecting McConnell’s proposal, capped by a thumbs down by McCain.

Top Senate Republicans think it’s time to leave their derailed drive to scrap the Obama health care law behind them, but President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged lawmakers to keep working on it.

“It’s an interesting time to be in health care,” Getman said. “It’s been a roller coaster.”

Getman said she’s approaching the debate in Congress not as a Republican or a Democrat but as a “passionate supporter of rural health care.”

“That is the ball I keep my eye on,” she said. “We’ve certainly been concerned because a number of the proposals look like they would have had some really significant negative impacts on rural communities, most notably because of the Medicaid population that we serve.”

At a Voters for Change-sponsored forum on health care legislation in late June, hospital spokesman Matt Scollin said approximately 8,800 people would be at risk of losing insurance coverage in the area served by Adirondack Health under legislation proposed in Congress, including 3,700 in Essex County and 5,100 in Franklin County. However, patients would still be treated in the emergency room, regardless of ability to pay. The loss of revenue to Adirondack Health could amount to more than $22 million over 10 years.

“We have been concerned when they’re throwing around millions of people losing that access to care,” Getman said. “Nationally, 46 percent of all small rural hospitals lost money last year. This is a small ecosystem we are a part of, and our role in communities isn’t just around health care. It’s also economic support for those communities.”

McCain said he’s concerned about skyrocketing premiums under Obamacare and insurance providers fleeing the marketplace, but he said he cast his no vote to the so-called skinny repeal “because it fell short of our promise to repeal and replace Obamacare with meaningful reform.” He also said the process was flawed, citing the lack of hearings and one-party closed-door negotiations on the legislation.

Getting those details out is important, Getman said.

“These aren’t sound bite issues,” she said. “There is detail behind it that will impact lives and can harm people. We need to help people look behind the headlines.”

“Certainly the Affordable Care Act had a lot of issues. We know it had huge issues on the insurance markets. We know there were states, not so much New York but others, where premiums were raised beyond where people could afford them. Let’s go fix those things, but we can only do that together.”

“The most devastating part has just been the uncertainty,” Getman added. “If you’re steering a ship and there’s a storm coming from one direction, we can kind of steer the ship through that. But when the wind keeps switching on you, it makes it much more challenging.”

Asked what local residents can do, Getman encouraged people to contact their elected officials and share their concerns.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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