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Jim Brexler says he's tired of being used-not him personally, but the charity hospital system he heads.
Brexler, chief of LSU's Health Care Services Division, says the ninehospital system he oversees was left holding the bag in this year's budget process, even to the point of having to sacrifice millions in federal money bound for public hospitals but used instead to fill holes elsewhere in the health care budget.
Essentially, he says, the charity system's capacity to tap temporary federal money is being exploited as a financing vehicle for other priorities.
Brexler also complains that, while the Legislature found a way to rescue the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals budget at the last minute, LSU's charity system was left bruised and staggering from a $66.5 million cut.
For years, the charity system has been underfunded. The latest cuts hit home in Baton Rouge at Earl K. Long Medical Center, which had to close a third of its operating rooms and a busy outpatient clinic and eliminate 'nearly 50 staff positions. Across the system, demand for indigent care has grown over the years as financial support from the state has shrunk.
Brexler says the charity system's handling during the last legislative session reflects DHH's philosophy toward greater privatization of indigent care in Louisiana.
"There has been an ongoing struggle philosophically with DHH, with the secretary, as to whether or not the public hospitals are something to be reinvested in or phased out and privatized," Brexler says. "It is truly a philosophical difference about how care for the poor can be rendered."
Other views
Sen. John T. "Tom" Schedler (R-Slidell), chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare committee, says LSU's gripe about its budget fate is just more of the same old song and dance. he's heard for years, though he agrees with LSU on some points.
David Hood, secretary of DHH, says Brexler shouldn't blame the department for what LSU perceives as a flawed charity hospital budget, since the Legislature has the final say on appropriations.
"They were legislative decisions," Hood says. "They certainly werent our decisions. We don't appropriate money. I think they're overestimating our influence with the Legislature."
DHH outlined to legislators the various options as clearly and honestly as possible, he says,...