Wow. Just when I thought there couldn’t be any more to say about this mess the local newspaper reveals that the head of a state agency administering state-funded health care to the poor (and an agency that has cut benefits to the poor) has bestowed a gigantic bonus on their agency chief. This guy’s great achievement? Setting the hook on the taxpayers for the provider tax, a tax that will be collected by his agency that in return will retain huge amounts of this tax to compensate them for this effort.
And what will be done with this money? It will go to the poor hospitals that have to “take all comers!” Like the hospital in today’s paper that is building spa-like ER’s in two locations and just spent $200 million in revitalization efforts at their main hospital. What? $200 million? Where do they get $200 million dollars? Did someone say that they needed more money to take care of the poor? Seriously? Have they maybe slightly overdone the cost-shifting thing a bit? How much care would $200 million dollars provide to the poor in Oklahoma?
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
