Becky Hultberg is the president and CEO of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association. (Courtesy Photo)

Becky Hultberg is the president and CEO of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association. (Courtesy Photo)

Opinion: Dunleavy’s budget jeopardizes Alaska’s health and economy

Alaskans deserve to understand impacts of governor’s choices.

  • By BECKY HULTBERG
  • Thursday, April 4, 2019 7:00am
  • Opinion

My good friend and former state Sen. Gretchen Guess often reminds me that life is about choices.

In public policy, our choices can enhance or destroy people’s lives, so we have a moral obligation to understand their consequences. Good choices involve a decision-making process. What problem am I trying to solve? What are my options? What information or data do I have to evaluate these options? What stakeholders might have information I missed?

In his rush to craft a state budget, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his team missed most of these decision-making steps, jeopardizing our economy and health.

Case in point is the governor’s Medicaid cuts, which the governor’s administration says will not reduce Medicaid eligibility or services and thus won’t impact the lives of Alaskans. In fact, many of these decisions were made with virtually no analysis or consultation with stakeholders and could have a dramatic impact on the health care system, people who rely on it and small Alaska communities. As the governor makes these choices, Alaskans should understand the consequences.

[Opinion: Debunking the myths of Medicaid expansion]

One of the most damaging budget proposals is to reduce Medicaid rates for nursing homes. These facilities, which house the medically vulnerable, are 75-100 percent Medicaid-funded. Medicaid pays what it costs to provide services, so cutting rates means that some nursing homes will be paid less than cost. You can see that this won’t work for long in a vulnerable facility that relies 100 percent on Medicaid. The consequences of the governor’s decision for some nursing homes will be reducing the quality of care for elders or closing and sending medically fragile Alaskans out of state.

The governor’s administration continues to falsely claim that the budget won’t hurt small hospitals. In fact, most small hospitals are co-located with a nursing home, sharing costs and staff. The nursing home revenue is often greater than the hospital revenue and helps keep the facility afloat. Cutting nursing home rates is more damaging to small hospitals than cutting hospital rates. The consequences of the governor’s choice? Dramatically reducing access to health care in some small communities or closing small independent hospitals.

In addition to making cuts that directly affect people’s lives, the governor proposes to drastically alter how larger hospitals and all nursing homes are paid, with no analysis of the impact of these changes. Consultants know a lengthy process and significant analysis is required to make informed changes of this magnitude without adverse impacts, but the governor wants to make them by Jan. 1.

[Opinion: There’s a right way to make budget decisions for Alaska. Then there’s a wrong way]

It is impossible to quantify the impacts without analysis, but the governor is pushing cuts without that information. Some of Alaska’s larger hospitals are not financially strong. How will this affect hospitals in Fairbanks and Juneau? How will it impact small nursing homes? We simply don’t know, but we can’t assume they will be fine.

The governor’s team also claims that budget cuts will not affect children, when in fact there is no data upon which to make this assertion. It is true that eligibility for Denali KidCare, the Medicaid program for children, is not impacted. However, access to health care has two parts — having a way to pay for it (insurance coverage) and having providers willing to see you. The department is cutting physician reimbursement rates an additional 5 percent on top of recent rate cuts. While pediatricians are exempt from this rate cut, other pediatric providers are not.

How will this cut affect the small number of pediatric specialists serving kids in our state? How will it affect physical therapists, speech therapists, psychologists and other providers of health care for children? We simply don’t know, because no analysis has been completed.

Life is about choices, and as the governor makes choices, Alaskans deserve to understand their impacts. We can have reasonable conversations based on full information, even if we disagree, but masking or ignoring the impacts of choices does Alaskans a disservice.

Alaska’s hospitals and nursing homes want to collaborate with the administration to improve health care and reduce cost growth, but that must be done in an environment of full transparency about actions and their consequences.


• Becky Hultberg is the president and CEO of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association. She lives in Anchorage. My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.


More in Opinion

Web
Have something to say?

Here’s how to add your voice to the conversation.

People living in areas affected by flooding from Suicide Basin pick up free sandbags on Oct. 20 at Thunder Mountain Middle School. (City and Borough of Juneau photo)
Opinion: Mired in bureaucracy, CBJ long-term flood fix advances at glacial pace

During meetings in Juneau last week, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)… Continue reading

The Alaska Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage. (Alaska Department of Family and Community Services photo)
My Turn: Rights for psychiatric patients must have state enforcement

Kim Kovol, commissioner of the state Department of Family and Community Services,… Continue reading

The Alaska Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage. (Alaska Department of Family and Community Services photo)
My Turn: Small wins make big impacts at Alaska Psychiatric Institute

The Alaska Psychiatric Institute (API), an 80-bed psychiatric hospital located in Anchorage… Continue reading

The settlement of Sermiligaaq in Greenland (Ray Swi-hymn / CC BY-SA 2.0)
My Turn: Making the Arctic great again

It was just over five years ago, in the summer of 2019,… Continue reading

Rosa Parks, whose civil rights legacy has recent been subject to revision in class curriculums. (Public domain photo from the National Archives and Records Administration Records)
My Turn: Proud to be ‘woke’

Wokeness: the quality of being alert to and concerned about social injustice… Continue reading

President Donald Trump and Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy pose for a photo aboard Air Force One during a stopover at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage in 2019. (Sheila Craighead / White House photo)
Opinion: Dunleavy has the prerequisite incompetence to work for Trump

On Tuesday it appeared that Gov. Mike Dunleavy was going to be… Continue reading

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many Louisiana homes were rebuilt with the living space on the second story, with garage space below, to try to protect the home from future flooding. (Infrogmation of New Orleans via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA)
Misperceptions stand in way of disaster survivors wanting to rebuild safer, more sustainable homes

As Florida and the Southeast begin recovering from 2024’s destructive hurricanes, many… Continue reading

The F/V Liberty, captained by Trenton Clark, fishes the Pacific near Metlakatla on Aug. 20, 2024. (Ash Adams/The New York Times)
My Turn: Charting a course toward seafood independence for Alaska’s vulnerable food systems

As a commercial fisherman based in Sitka and the executive director of… Continue reading

Most Read