I was among the demonstrators at Mercy Regional Medical Center on Feb. 25 and, after listening to Centura Health CEO Peter Banko explain why the company pulled out of negotiations with the Southwest Health Alliance, I left with my blood boiling (not a condition requiring treatment at that hospital, thank goodness).
Banko said he called Tuesday’s “town hall” with Mercy staff to explain why the company had chosen to “poke the bear” and abandon local efforts to provide a cheaper health insurance option. He also wanted to ballyhoo Centura’s announcement that they had instead decided to drop Mercy’s prices by 20%.
First, I want to say I found Banko disingenuous, patronizing and all together lacking of the empathy one would hope to see in the leader of a nonprofit, religion-based hospital group.
Second, I think it’s patently obvious that Centura’s rate decrease does not come from the goodness of their hearts but rather aims to hobble the local organizing effort so that, once it dies on the vine, they can go back to slowly ratcheting their prices back up.
Everyone in the room, including Banko, agreed that the premiums we pay for insurance in Durango and the surrounding area are egregiously high. But he proceeded to argue for a system that maintains the status quo, under which his bottom line is the beneficiary and we locals get shafted.
I acknowledge that for me it’s personal. I am a local small business owner, and I saw my rates for insurance on the state’s exchange skyrocket after a modest increase in my income priced me out of the subsidies. On the business side, when I contemplate giving my employees a raise, I have to worry about whether it will cause them to lose their Medicaid coverage, thereby exposing them to our exorbitantly priced, hole-riddled monstrosity of a private health insurance system.
If people wonder why a once-radical idea like Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All is gaining traction, they need only look at players like Banko, who see a community bleeding out from unconscionably high medical costs and offer, with faux beneficence, to staunch the flow by 20%.
Katie BurfordDurango
