Reliable Health Insurance Jacksonville Florida

As children's hospitals expand, costs and questions rise, too

WASHINGTON — Rising from a 60-acre field of old cypress swamp and cattle pasture near the Orlando airport, the seven-story Nemours Children's Hospital will be a monument to "best-in-class" care, its leaders boast.

That may be the case. But at a cost of about $400 million, the equivalent of $4.2 million for each of its 95 beds, Nemours also will rank among the more expensive children's hospitals ever built when it is completed next year. Some people believe construction never should have begun.

Florida health planners twice rejected Nemours' applications for a new hospital, noting that Orlando already had two children's hospitals; most cities have only one. A third hospital could duplicate existing services, driving up costs for insurers, employers and policyholders.

The regulators reversed themselves in 2008, however, after Nemours, a wealthy Jacksonville-based foundation, mounted an extensive marketing campaign and lined up scores or politicians and civic boosters, including former Gov. Jeb Bush.

"It's a case of excess here in Orlando," said Becky Cherney, until recently the head of the Florida Health Care Coalition, a statewide business group concerned about the impact of rising health spending. "We don't have anything against Nemours. But central Florida doesn't need another children's hospital."

The battle over Nemours reflects the transformation of children's hospitals from small, struggling charities to huge, often profitable businesses. From their humble origins more than a century ago, many of the nation's biggest and best-known children's hospitals today are health care juggernauts with sprawling medical centers and suburban satellites, extensive real estate holdings, thousands of well-paid employees and millionaire CEOs.

The billions of dollars flowing through children's hospitals every year pay for care for tens of thousands of kids, many of them extremely sick or suffering from chronic conditions requiring a lifetime of treatment. Hospital officials say costs are high because the care is complicated and the technology expensive. In addition, the hospitals help fund research into the causes and treatment of diseases.

Florida's SCHIP Health Insurance Slashed By Bush – Poor Get Less ...

Jacksonville, FL (PRWEB) December 31, 2007

For months, House Democrats have been trying to increase the amount of money spent on the nations SCHIP program, according to Florida health insurance web, a free health insurance consulting service. In response, the president said, “. our nation's goal should be to move children who have no insurance to private coverage, not to move children who have private health coverage to government coverage.”

Senate leader Harry Reid reacted to the cut in funding immediately saying; “Never has it been clearer how detached President Bush is from the priorities of the American people,” Reid said in a statement. “By slashing a bipartisan bill to renew the successful Children's Health Insurance Program, President Bush is denying health care to millions of low-income kids in America.”

The (SCHIP) – State Children's Health Insurance Program – is a joint state-federal effort that subsidizes health coverage for 6.6 million people, mostly children, who come from families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford their own private health insurance coverage. According to health insurance experts, there are 35 million American's who fit into this category.

The Democrats who control Congress, with significant support from Republicans, passed the legislation to add $35 billion over five years to allow an additional 4 million children into the program. It would be funded by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.

The president had promised to veto it, saying the Democratic bill was too costly, took the program too far from its original intent of helping the poor, and would entice people now covered in the private sector to switch to government coverage. He only approved a $5 billion increase in funding.

Bush argued that the congressional plan would have been a move toward socialized medicine by expanding the program to higher-income families. In contrast to what he wishes to impose on his fellow Americans, President Bush has spent much of his adult life with taxpayer-funded health insurance, or as he calls it, “socialized” health care.

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