After my article Sunday in the WDL on Parkland and the county’s indigent health care I’ve been doing some more research today.
I’ve found out some interesting things and I’m waiting for some more specifics and details.
When it comes to indigent health care, the county is required to put 8 percent of the county’s tax revenue levy aside for indigent health care.
That 8 percent is broken up with 4 percent going to hospital care, 2 percent to medical care and 2 percent to prescription.
According to the state, the county is only required to reimburse indigent health care for people at or below 21 percent of the federal poverty level, but the county may choose to qualify people for assistance up to 50 percent of the federal poverty level.
Here’s a breakdown of monthly income standards at 21 percent of the FPG.
Family of 1 – $172
Family of 2 – $231
Family of 3 – $291
Family of 4 – $350
If you’re making more than that a month, you wont qualify for assistance.
According to county sources, the county has not reached the budgeted amount for indigent health care in any recent years. If it were to reach or pass the budgeted amount, the state will reimburse up to 90 percent of the health care costs over budget.
Otherwise, any budgeted money that does not get spent, rolls over into the general fund to fix your roads and bridges or other misc. county projects.
So what does this mean?
I tried to explain it to a friend this way (as I understand it – granted I may be overlooking something at this point or over simplifying it):
Lets say 8 percent of the tax revenue is $200,000 (these are totally hypothetical dollar amounts)
The county gives some money to Hope clinic, lets say $25,000.
Parkland or other hospitals bill the county for the three indigent health care patients they had in FY 2005 at nearly $100,000.
At the end of the year the county has $75,000 left over (not including medicine or other medical costs).
Whatever is not spent, that money goes into the general fund and gets divided up into the different precints for their road and bridge construction money.
In the meantime, someone making $5,000 a year with four members in the family is stuck having to pay huge medical bills because the county has such a low qualification amount.
The county will only pay for people at 21% or below the federal poverty level.
The state says you can change that to 50 percent and they’ll reimburse 90 percent of it.
So if the county budgeted $200,000 and ended up having to spend $300,000 in a year the state would give the county $90,000.
It would only cost the county $10,000 to provide $100,000 of service.
I hope its not as “simple” as that. I hope there’s some other situations I’m overlooking at this point as to why we’re not helping more people in need.
