Central Health (AGAIN) siphoning money away from indigent health care....

"Defend the poor and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and needy."
Psalm 82:3

Any time Central Health makes the news, it's never good.  Yesterday, we attended an event where a broad ideological cross section of Austinites highlighted their failure to provide services in Del Valle while continuing to subsidize the UT medical school and building lavish buildings for themselves.  Keep in mind, the alleged purpose of this entity is to provide "indigent health care."



Highlights:

• Central Health has been stonewalling activists for 9 months.

• Del Valle has paid for facilities that have never been built.

• CH has a $200 million budget this year.

• CH building expensive office buildings instead of Health Care facilities.

• CH gets federal $$$, but Lloyd Doggett isn't doing anything.
• Ditto Kirk Watson...and central health is his baby.

• According to several people at the event, the current CH board is stacked with Kirk Watson cronies.

• The homeless are getting a few crumbs tossed their way for political purposes.

• CH is involved in all sorts of things outside their charter.

• "We break the rules all the time in Travis County."

• Accountability, accessibility, transparency.

Reconfigured UT Board given heck over Central Health's improper subsidies for Dell Medical School....

"Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord,
But a just weight is His delight."
Proverbs 11:1

As a glutton for punishment, we briefly stopped by today's UT Regent meeting to hear UTIMCO's annual report.  Nothing interesting there.  But there was something else modestly fun.

As we highlighted last November, Central Health (the Travis County hospital district) has been improperly subsidizing operating expenses at the UT Medical school.  This flows from a shady as all heck arrangement that arose from the 2012 tax increase to allow Central Health to partner with UT Austin on the Med school.  Technically, their collaboration was supposed to be limited to helping Travis County cover "indigent health."

Today, activist Fred Lewis presented findings to the Board over the degree to which Central Health has instead been funding the payroll for the UT Med school; as it turns out 84% of total compensation for the Dell Medical school has been coming from Central Health.

It gets better: Apparently, the Dell Medical school has no records of Central Health funds being used for indigent health.

Of course, it's UT; they don't care.

That being said, it was fun to watch Steve Hicks act all butthurt over this: "I take exception."

Bottom Line: Considering the degree to which  UT is protected by the Governor these days, they'll get away with everything, but it was still fun to watch them squirm.

Is the UT Politburo (literally) stealing from the poor?!?

‘Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.’

“And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’
Deuteronomy 27:19

We've got to imagine this is technically legal, but it's still reprehensible:

The University of Texas Dell Medical School and Travis County’s health care district appear to have misspent local tax dollars that are supposed to be used for indigent care, activists charged Monday in a report that calls on county commissioners to order an independent audit.

The report, written by lawyer and activist Fred Lewis, questions the disposition of $105 million in county property taxes collected by Central Health and transferred to the Dell school. Travis County voters in 2012 agreed to raise property taxes, with $35 million a year going to the medical school.

The report contends that state law restricts Central Health’s spending to health care for poor people but that the money appears to have been improperly commingled with other medical school funds and spent on governmental affairs, communications, general administration, and faculty and staff salaries unrelated to such health care.

Read the whole thing here.

#ATXCouncil and Smoking: Another POINTLESS hornet's nest....

"Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things,
And revive me in Your way."
Psalm 119:37

We'd intended to comment upon the proposed expansion of the smoking ban, but Greg Harrison beat us to the punch:

A taxpayer-funded hospital district is hoping to expand an already existing violation of property rights by extending a previous ill-conceived municipal “smoking ban” to include all public outdoor patios — effectively criminalizing smoking (and vaping) in all public businesses.

The initiative comes from Austin’s Central Health, a publically funded hospital district in Travis County. Central Health’s Communication Director Ted Burton expects the initiative to come before Austin City Council between November and January — pending a councilmember sponsoring the initiative to bring it before council. Once the issue is brought up, it will require 3/4ths of councilmembers’ approval in order to be adopted.

Austin narrowly approved (by a 52% margin) the initial smoking ban back in 2005 — which removed a bar owners’ right to choose whether or not their establishment allowed smoking and imposed a blanket ban of indoor smoking in all public spaces. Adapting to the new regulations, property owners established ‘smoking patios’ to accommodate customers who smoke.

Obviously, this idea is dangerous and misguided.  We recommend Greg's piece in full for the policy ramifications.  We want to focus on something else.

If council chooses to go down this path, it will be yet another controversy that accomplishes nothing (ie. like Uber/Lyft and Short Term Rentals).  But the good news is that nothing has happened as of yet.  If council keeps it that way, they still have an opportunity to avoid inflaming the community.

Bottom Line: Remember what we said about "the other group of arrogant jerks."

Addressing Texas' EXPLOSION of Special Taxing Districts....

"But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver. Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people, but I did not do so, because of the fear of God."
Nehemiah 5:15

Watchdog outlines a subtle, but important, issue:

When former Texas Comptroller Susan Combs issued a report in 2012 on special purpose districts — largely invisible layers of government with the power to charge property and sales taxes — there were 1,675 of the suckers.

She sounded the alarm, waived the flag and irritated a few people in the process. But the special purpose districts continued to sprout up all over the state, now growing to about 2,000.

Combs is still beating the drum about the issue, even though she’s since left public office.

“There has been no effort to rein any of this in,” she said Friday.

Indeed, these ghost-like governments have continued to proliferate, according to data from the comptroller’s office. According to U.S. Census data, as of 2012, Texas has the third most special districts in the nation, trailing only California and Illinois.

....

Although a legislative committee was set up in 2013 to oversee the districts, Combs said, “They won’t do anything.” The lobby supporting the districts, from law firms that make a lot of money off the districts to mayors to judges to school superintendents, has been too powerful. Combs tried to get a transparency bill passed in 2013, but it was killed twice on the House floor on points of order.

“There’s a lot of interests that have a huge financial stake in the districts,” said John Colyandro, executive director of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute in Austin. “Particularly those with not just taxing authority, but with bonding authority and that’s quite a lucrative area to be in.”

If you're a conservative, eliminating most (if not all) of these districts is a no-brainer; it's a testament to the entrenched power of taxpayer funded lobbyists that the number of these entities is exploding when it should be collapsing.

Here in Travis County, we're actually somewhat lucky.  While there are some small MUD's and water districts in outlying areas, for most of the County Central Health (our hospital district) is the only special district to which we're subjected.  Of course, their record is bad enough.

Enter Jay Wiley.

Last September, following their most recent abomination, Jay Wiley endorsed ABOLISHING Central Health.  To our knowledge, Jay Wiley is the first candidate to explicitly campaign on eliminating a specific local entity.  That stands in contrast with an incumbent who filed a bill last session to create a NEW special purpose district in Western Travis County.

Bottom Line: To curtail these unaccountable sources of taxation, legislators need to eliminate them within their districts. Unfortunately, the taxpayer funded lobbyist industrial complex loves these entities.  Kudos to Jay Wiley for endorsing the elimination of Travis' County's "Central Health" hospital district....

Wiley endorses ABOLISHING Central Health!!!

"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
But when a wicked man rules, the people groan."
Proverbs 29:2

The Central Health Hospital district, previously seen promoting subsidized abortion and raising Austinites' taxes to subsidize the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, is back with more shenanigans:

For the first time since its creation in 2004, the taxing authority that oversees health care for needy Travis County residents is trying to fundamentally change who would be eligible for free or low-cost services.

In redesigning the health care system for uninsured and underinsured county residents, Central Health officials are discussing how to categorize patients based on medical need, while potentially raising the income threshold for services. The Central Health board this spring discussed boosting the threshold from its current maximum of $48,500 for a family of four to nearly $91,000.

That idea went over with a thud, but it’s not entirely off the table. Central Health staff is exploring options and the impact on taxpayers.

A fleshed-out proposal is expected in November, but the discussion is underway now because of an unusual partnership between the public Central Health and the private Seton Healthcare Family. The two created the nonprofit Community Care Collaborative in 2013 to produce a better coordinated, more integrated care delivery system for the safety net population they serve. And now they are trying to put that system in place as their answer to fixing a fragmented, inefficient network of care.

It comes at a time of uncertainty about how much federal aid will be available for indigent health care after Sept. 30, 2016. That’s the expiration date of a Medicaid program that is expected to generate nearly $260 million in the new fiscal year for Travis County safety net providers — unless the federal government renews it.

....

Seton is investing in the collaborative and building a $295 million teaching hospital that it will own where indigent patients will receive care. A legal agreement between Central Health and Seton allows Seton to retain $20 million a year for five years, a total of $100 million, to cover the costs of transitioning to the integrated delivery system, including hiring staff, setting up a call center, creating electronic records and other work, said Seton executive Greg Hartman, vice chairman of the collaborative.

Some observers have questioned whether Central Health is going too far to appease Seton, which has the right, under the legal agreement, to mutually decide with Central Health who should be eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health care services.

Empower Texans picked up the Statesman article, which we posted to the "Travis County Republicans" Facebook group along with a question for Jay Wiley:

Adam Cahnman via Empower Texans

19 hrs

Jay Wiley: Will you carry a bill to abolish Central Health next session?!?

Travis County Agency, Private Hospital Propose Subsidized Health Care For Upper Middle Class | Empower Texans℠

WWW.EMPOWERTEXANS.COM

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• Walt Manly, James Ritter and David Rogers like this.

Wiley's response:

• 

  Jay Wiley You bet -- it's an even bigger nightmare than we all understand. Let's just say I get an earful all the time from the medical rank and file that have to deal with the mess they've created.

  Like · Reply · 2 · 19 hrs
• 

  Adam Cahnman Oh wait, that's right, your wife is a doctor!

  Like · Reply · 3 · 19 hrs
• 

  Jay Wiley like I said, night. mare.

  Like · Reply · 1 · 19 hrs

Bottom Line: Central Health's latest boondoggle is business as usual for an organization that has previously subsidized the murder of children and the second wealthiest University in the country; kudos to Jay Wiley for his willingness to shut the whole mess down.