Dear Editor,
I have been following the debate regarding healthcare in Saratoga with great interest. After studying the proposals to date, I am convinced that we are headed in the wrong direction. There is a medical emergency in rural America. More than 100 of the country rural hospitals have gone broke, then closed in the last decade turning some of the most rural parts of the United States into what experts now call “health hazard zones.” Looking at the information on Saratoga’s situation I believe that we are on the verge of becoming the latest rural health care statistic.
In reviewing the proposals to date that are all “grant heavy” and do not seem to provide any specific information on what the actual long-range annual cost of operations will be. It gives me great concern that we are not getting the full financial picture of what the community will be required to provide by way of its financial support. I would like to know what the cost to Saratoga’s budget, cost to the local taxpayer consumer and the cost of servicing the debt and what amount will have to be raised each year to balance the budget that will be incurred in the construction of an emergency hospital in a townhouse whose population is approximately 1,200 people. I would like to see a long-range financial and operational plan that lays out the estimated cost of operation such a facility and a description on where the monies for its operation will come from. Just from looking at other similar operations in other areas such as the one in Wheatland, my estimate is that the cost of the operation including debt over twenty years will be in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $130,000 per month. This cost to the community and its taxpayers could exceed the financial ability of the town and lead to the fiscal unsustainability of the facilities operation and then to the bankruptcy court as has been the case in so many other similar rural communities. Once in the hand of a bankruptcy court there is the threat that given state and federal law that Saratoga could lose control of its investment in the operation and that the corporation formed to develop the facility would retain control of the operations and benefit from its liquidation.
I would like to see Saratoga and the surrounding communities of Carbon County consider the option of a regional health care concept anchored on the Rawlins hospital and utilizing the current facilities in a cooperative program that provided services to all the participants. Coordination of the levels of care and budgeting for those services would have to be negotiated with the communities served and be approved by each participating community. I think that this would be a financially better option and provide affordable health care to our communities at a much lower cost than the current proposal.
A small community is only as healthy as its medial capability and a system that is debt laden is a threat to the long-term financial and medical well-being of our community. I hope that the Saratoga city government and all of the residents of our town will examine the possibility that I have suggested and not let the current proposed plan be forced upon the community without an examination of other options that might provide adequate health care without the crushing debt associated with the current proposal.
John O’Grady, Saratoga
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