Surgery Center of Oklahoma Blog

Here is a unique concept:  state legislators vote to increase your federal taxes.  That’s right.  The “provider tax” is a tax that hospitals will pay to the state and that money will be used to “leverage” federal dollars…every dollar paid in tax brings two dollars from the feds…cough..taxpayers. This money then goes to…you guessed it….mostly the big hospitals!  You see, the government doesn’t have any money that it didn’t first take from taypayers….you and me.  So a vote to levy a tax on a hospital creates an increased tax burden for taxpayers from the feds!  And these big hospitals need this money….right?  Let me see…in Oklahoma City one hospital system bought the hospital in Edmond.  Another hospital is building a new hospital in Edmond (never mind that the Edmond hospital was incredibly underutilized).  Another hospital spent over 100 million (yes..that’s correct) on an electronic medical records system (one physician there told me it was 500 million).  That same hospital is building office/clinic space in Edmond (I think the price tag is 88 million).  All of the hospitals are buying smaller rural hospitals…of course if they don’t make a lot of  money for the hospital system they dump them later (Stroud).  And then, of course, the hostile purchase and takeover of private physician practices continues.  And they need more money?  This is corporate welfare at its finest.  Once again, we need healthy and successful hospitals, however,  this tax only serves to make the hospitals richer than they already are and at the expense of the already overburdened taxpayer.  Hopefully folks will wake up to the poor mouthing antics of those who are happy to fleece anyone that buys this foolishness.