Alden Wolfe is vice chairman of the Rockland County, N.Y. Legislature. A Democrat, Wolfe publicly called for the county to apply for an HSS innovation Challenge grant, with which it could work to revive the ailing Summit Park local health system.
Government Health IT Editor Tom Sullivan spoke with Wolfe about that effort, about what impact a Republican president could have on healthcare at the local level and about the difference between federal and local bi-partisan healthcare efforts.
Q: How does healthcare figure into your role as a legislator?
A: Rockland County owns and operates Summit Park, a nursing home and hospital [with] long-term acute care beds, and also there’s the mental health component that operates out of the hospital as well. As a county, this serves as a safety net for a lot of people who otherwise would not have access to that kind of care. Summit Park is an important part of the services Rockland County provides to its residents. To the extent that it’s a service the county provides, it’s part and parcel with the way that I serve as a legislator in terms of the oversight of the government service.
Q: Can you tell me more about your push for the county to apply to the HHS Innovation Challenge? What’s your vision for what you would do with that money?
A: The issue with the hospital and nursing home took a turn last year. In October of 2010, in his budget, the county executive proposed that it be sold to a public benefit corporation, a quasi-public entity. It’s not government, but it would be created by the state legislature. In his vision with that, the county would transfer it over and he told us there would be efficiencies and other benefits to doing that. The first time I heard of that was in the budget. A year went by and we never really got any specifics, so the future of the hospital is really in question. We hired consultants who, hopefully in a month or two, will give us a sense of what their recommendations are about streamlining operations or what to do about the hospital because it does cost county taxpayers an awful lot of money year-over-year. Do we sell it? Do we close it? Do we change the way it’s operated? We’re really unsure about all of these options. And as you may know in his 2012 budget – a year after he recommended the hospital be transferred to a public benefit corporation, which a lot of us did not want to do because we had no information – he proposed de-funding it, essentially closing it as of the end of the summer, which we reversed as well because you can’t just close a hospital in seven to eight months.
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We’re concerned about what that might mean for those who rely on the hospital or live in the nursing home. Some people have been there more than a decade, that’s their home. So we’re concerned about those people that need that service. Right now, the state of public healthcare in Rockland County is really in flux. We’re concerned about what to do, and I look at this grant program opportunity as a way of funding what might be coming next. Say, for example, if we invest in marketing, or the actual physical infrastructure of the hospital, even something as simple as a beautification. And part of the grant is digitizing records and a computerized information system for better service delivery. That would help with billing for reimbursement. It all fits in the mix. If we’re going to keep this hospital, we have to reinvent the way we deliver the service because otherwise it’s not sustainable.
Q: One of the things I have to wonder about is what impact an administration change might have on health reform. How do you see things changing if a Republican were to win the White House?
A: It’s hard to say. If you paint with a broad brush, in terms of the divide between Democrats and Republicans, one might argue that a Democrat in the White House would be in favor of liberalizing healthcare, making it available to all Americans. As a Democrat, and someone who cares about this issue, I think that a Republican in the White House would probably have a devastating effect on the availability of healthcare services to people in this country.
Q: Would a Republican be able to undo what progress has already been made?
A: Oh, I don’t doubt that for a second. The Republican House has already tried to do that. Any change in administration brings a change in priorities and policy. I think that any Republican candidate will be campaigning, they’ve already been campaigning, on undoing what was already done.
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The wild card is really going to be this focus now on the middle class – the whole payroll tax cut highlighted that. I think now, perhaps, Americans are waking up and realizing that there are good things associated with the health reform legislation and perhaps the increase in availability, which to me is a big thing. It’s not just the cost, but the availability of care that is most meaningful. I think people may be starting to realize that the federal healthcare legislation is doing what it’s supposed to do, and that is making healthcare more available to a wider stratum of society.
Q: There are healthcare professionals who might say that the nature of health reform is lost amid all the politicking – and, worse, that taxpayers and citizens lose out.
A: I think that’s an attitude typical of many Republican candidates, where they stick to dogma, philosophy and political [character] assassination and ignore the true merit of anything. If Obama came up with the cure for cancer, they would somehow find fault in it. So that’s where politics divert the sense of reality. It’s the nature of the game.
Luckily on the local level here, we work more collaboratively. While we may have philosophical differences, what we’re really about is providing services to people. While we may disagree on the big D and big R issues, we really are on the same page when it comes to the priorities of the county.
For more of our primaries coverage, visit Political Malpractice: Healthcare in the 2012 Election.
