health care:

Bill to open UMC cancer center OK’d on party lines

Thursday, April 9, 2009 | 10:38 a.m.

A black eye in medicine brings posturing, again (4-9-09)
J-1 doctors at UMC: It could benefit both (4-9-09)
UMC CEO: Bill to open cancer center doesn’t address funding (4-8-09)

Archive of Sun health stories

CARSON CITY – On a partisan vote, the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee has approved a bill to require that University Medical Center re-open its out-patient cancer center.

Committee Democrats voted for Assembly Bill 433. Republicans opposed it.

Before approving the measure, the committee amended the bill to require treatment of indigent patients residing in Clark County. The bill would have required University Medical Center to open its doors to indigent patients from across the state.

After testifying before the committee on Wednesday, UMC CEO Kathy Silver said the bill wouldn’t address the lack of funds needed to operate the center.

The controversial decision to close the public hospital’s cancer center wasn’t an easy one, but was made because the county faces a deficit of more than $70 million this fiscal year and could be in the hole $90 million next fiscal year, she said. Silver told the committee it would take $3.5 million to re-open the clinic and operate at the same level.

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said the decision to close the clinic -- the subject of a segment on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” television program -- was “unacceptable.”

“People are dying,” Leslie said, adding that she couldn’t understand why UMC and Clark County could not come up with a way to keep the center operating.

Silver said UMC is in talks with two groups interested in re-opening the public hospital’s out-patient cancer center. She did not identify the two groups.

Discussion: 2 comments so far…

By Gregory

4/9/09 at 11:56 a.m.

Suggest removal

There are a lot more squeaky wheels that would get the grease if national media came out and camped in Nevada for a year or two.

Anyone can take a photo of the Bellagio or City Center, which is getting a big property tax abatement, and then take a photo of the UMC exterior, and see where Nevada's tax structure priorities have been the past 20 years. They have not "entirely" been in the wrong place, necessarily, just grossly disproportionate.

If banks and mining, as two very notably examples, were contributing a little more kitty to the tax structure, then Carson City could effectively ask gaming to pay at least a couple points more.

What good is it for an urban area like Clark County to generate 250,000 new jobs that pay $10-15 dollars an hour over 15 years, making, say, seventy people very rich, while at the same time there is no concurrent growth in the supply of healthcare and other support systems out in the communities that surround those jobs.

If you incur a problem, you may very well find yourself "on your own", and ligitation for medical mistakes and/or poor decision making won't make you well again.
By NNurse

4/9/09 at 1:08 p.m.

Suggest removal

The for-profit hospitals in Las Vegas pay little to no taxes and ship the profits back to out of state headquarters. Why not tax them for "skimming" the profitable patients and leaving UMC with the uninsured? The taxes could then be used to provide care, not to just the indigent, but to the large percentage of LVV residents who work but have no health insurance.