Healthcare Advocates Discuss The Med

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - At a glance, you might find the pictures of natural foods that line the wall of the Market Cafe in downtown Memphis as a subliminal suggestion of a desired lifestyle.

But, when you've got a roomful of Tennessee healthcare advocates meeting to discuss strategies to advance local, regional and National Healthcare reform issues, the art work would seem to fit perfectly...at least subliminally.

However, 9th District Congressman, Steve Cohen, is among those who believe there's nothing ethereal about the real-world issues that confront those concerned with the U-S House passed healthcare reform measure and its possible effect on the future of the Bluff City's financially embattled Regional Medical Center.

Cohen remarked on Monday, "There's much in the bill that will help in Memphis, particularly with the Med. The Med, one it's problems, is uninsured citizens that it treats and there'll be less uninsured if we have more health insurance."

The Med's uncertain future was among the hot topics discussed during a luncheon, sponsored by the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, which drew thirty representatives from five different healthcare advocacy groups. But, it took Arkansas State legislator, Representative Keith Ingram, to sound the most positive note at the low-key affair.

Ingram cited that a legislatively enacted Tobacco Tax in Arkansas will mean the state will start paying back some of the estimated eleven-million dollars in past indigent care costs owed to the Med by patients brought over for emergency treatment from the Natural State.

Ingram asserted, "The Med should receive somewhere around three and a half million dollars that they have not received in previous years to help offset this care that they are providing for our region. It's a goal of mine that we double that. If you're taken to the Med…if you have blunt force trauma…if you're shot, stabbed, burned, you have the second highest survivability rate of any trauma hospital in the country. It's eighty-four percent!"

Unfortunately, Arkansas' "Christmas present" to the hospital isn't going to be matched at all by neighboring Mississippi. Nor will it be sufficient, by itself, to fend off the threat of the Med's possible closure of it's operating rooms on February first....if a request to the Shelby County Commission....to provide thirty-two million in additional funds to continue services isn't granted by that date.

Commissioner Deidre Malone cited, "Having been on the Commission for seven years, this is the very first time that they've asked for anything outside the 27.5 million that we've given them over the course of this seven years."