Workers join forces to rally against rising hospital costs

By Emily Richmond

Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2002 | 9:42 a.m.

A coalition of firefighters, police officers, teachers, construction workers and Culinary Union members says its members face large increases in the cost of hospital visits next month if stalled negotiations with area hospitals aren't jump-started.

In a rally this morning at the Sawyer State Office Building, the union-based Health Services Purchasing Coalition protested the rising price of health care. The coalition is in negotiations with specific hospitals over the cost of hospital visits for its members. A coalition spokesman said at some hospitals the premiums could jump nearly 20 percent over last year.

Co-payments for visits to doctors' offices, however, aren't expected to increase.

It's the first time in a decade that the coalition, which represents 320,000 union employees and their families, has had to renegotiate health benefits without the protection of legislative caps on hospital costs. That law expired in 1999, and the coalition's existing contracts run out Feb. 1.

Las Vegas Fire Capt. Rusty McAllister, a coalition spokesman, said this morning the hospitals aren't taking into account the strained financial circumstances facing many area residents since Sept. 11. Thousands of people have been laid off, and paying higher insurance premiums could be the final straw for many people, McAllister said.

"The hospitals are asking for increases that are unreasonable," McAllister said. "There's no way we can handle such a huge jump in costs."

The coalition has focused much of its criticism on the out-of-state corporations that own most of the Las Vegas Valley's hospitals. Some of those companies have reported profit margins as high as 40 percent since last year, a coalition spokeswoman said.

HCA Inc., which operates Sunrise and MountainView hospitals and is based in Nashville,Tenn., was up $4.4 billion in revenues for the third quarter of last year, financial reports showed.

Ann Lynch, spokeswoman for Sunrise, said the coalition is focused on the wrong target. Hospitals aren't responsible for rising costs, Lynch said.

"The only cost that hospitals control is personnel," Lynch said Monday. "We don't manufacture drugs or equipment, we don't decide how much our electric bill is every month. We've held costs down in Nevada for quite a while, and eventually it catches up with you."

University Medical Center, the county's only public hospital, is also negotiating with the coalition for a new contract. UMC officials declined to comment Monday, citing the confidentiality of the ongoing negotiations.

In 1991, then-Gov. Bob Miller pushed through legislation that prohibited increases in hospital charges for 18 months and then limited price hikes for the next three years at for-profit hospitals. The price hikes allowed were limited to the increase in the medical portion of the consumer price index. The law expired in 1999.

Legislators say the law's effectiveness was limited because it only applied to billed charges sent to individuals, not the majority of patients who paid fees negotiated by insurance companies.