Pub. radio show Marketplace: 9/15 story on Oakland County/Brooks Patterson mediplex

[Orthophonic]

From today's public radio story on the Marketplace show, at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/d...urban-detroit/

Brooks Patterson has identified health care industry as a key to increasing Oakland County employment. Objections to this include: overbuilding of hospital capacity leading in general to higher health care costs all around, and the area is already well-served medically. There was a discussion of the Certificate of Need commission, which is supposed to determined whether new hospitals are actually necessary, though in recent years it has been bypassed politically. Some interesting quotes:

"...Now keep in mind, the Certificate of Need commission is endorsed by all the state's top employers. In fact, General Motors did a study that found that the commission kept down health costs and might free up the company to hire more workers. But here's what happened when I just brought that up to Brooks.

WARNER: They showed me a study that said that Michigan had kept costs lower than other states, and they attributed that to the strong CON process because once a hosp--

PATTERSON: Is that the company that just went bankrupt? And you're taking advice from those yahoos about health care costs?! That's what bankrupted their company to begin with was the health care costs and now they're experts in how to keep costs down?!"

... but it sounds so much better than it reads!

Also from a guy representing companies/unions who pay for health insurance...

"DENNIS MCCAFFERTY: If the goal is to create jobs? There's some vacant space in downtown Detroit. Why don't we build some pyramids? We can employ tens of thousands of people for 40 or 50 years. And they would make as much sense as building redundant hospital capacity."

I don't think Brooks and Dennis get together for a beer very often.

[Mikeg]

......There was a discussion of the Certificate of Need commission, which is supposed to determined whether new hospitals are actually necessary, though in recent years it has been bypassed politically......

EVALUATION OF CERTIFICATE OF NEED [[CON) IN MICHIGAN
Volume I Final Report
Christopher J Conover Ph D
Frank A Sloan Ph D
Center for Health Policy Law and Management
Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Duke University
A Report to the
Michigan Department of Community Health
May 2003

FINDINGS REGARDING GENERAL CON
Upon reviewing a large body of national and Michigan specific material regarding acute care CON, including an analysis of what happened in states that dropped acute care CON, the Center found that:

• There is little evidence that CON results in a reduction in costs and some evidence to suggest the opposite.
• Removal of CON does not consistently lead to a surge in either acquisition of new facilities or medical expenditures.
• ......
• ......
• ......
• CON appears to improve inner city access at the expense of access in suburban areas hence elimination of CON could create financial difficulties absent some sort of alternative mechanism such as a hospital pool that would more equitably distribute the burden of uncompensated care.