Proposed bill would cripple access to health care

What would you do if you owned a restaurant and your guests routinely paid you only $20 when the bill for their meal was $30? You probably wouldn’t stay in business for very long.

Unfortunately, that same scenario could be playing out soon in hospitals and doctor’s offices across California if a poorly conceived piece of legislation now under consideration at the State Capitol is enacted.

Assembly Bill (AB) 3087 (Kalra, D-San Jose) would siphon billions of dollars away from hospitals, doctors, dentists and other providers by artificially capping payments for care provided to patients covered by private health insurance. The bill’s sponsors falsely believe that this approach will magically lower health care costs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

AB 3087 fails to address the underlying reasons that health care costs are on the rise. For example, the bill would not reduce the prices that hospitals have to pay for life-saving drugs or new medical technologies. It also would not slow down rising labor costs, which comprise about 60 percent of a hospital’s overall budget.

One of the biggest flaws in AB 3087, however, is the fact that it would do nothing to solve the chronic underfunding of the Medicare and MediCal programs. For more than two decades, these government-sponsored programs have paid doctors, hospitals and other providers far less than the actual cost of care. As a result, health care costs for people with commercial health insurance are higher than is otherwise necessary. Health care’s dirty little secret is this: You pay more so the government can pay less.

AB 3087 will dismantle the health care system as we know it. Hospitals and doctors would simply be paid less for the care they provide to patients, regardless of the actual costs they incur.

According to the California Hospital Association, AB 3087 will cut $18 billion every year from hospitals alone. The results would be ugly. This bill could lead to massive cuts in hospital services, and large numbers of hospitals could be forced to close their doors. Doctors may retire early or flee the state altogether. And an estimated 175,000 health care workers could lose their jobs. Access to vital health care services would be crippled.

The rising cost of health care is a legitimate issue that needs attention. Here at Adventist Health Lodi Memorial, we are working diligently to address these concerns by utilizing lean thinking to improve our processes, increasing our primary care access and ensuring the proper utilization of testing in our emergency department.

And Adventist Health Lodi Memorial is not unique. Hospital costs in California are among the lowest in the nation. The cost for hospital care in California is 6.5 percent lower than the national average — and we rank in the bottom 25 percent of the country.

Certainly there is more that can be — and must be — done to make health care more affordable for everyone. But AB 3087 is not the answer.

AB 3087 is bad medicine for all Californians.