State budget deal voids vital role of health council

GOV. ED RENDELL and legislative leaders made a big deal Monday about not having to furlough 25,000 state workers this week. What they didn’t say was that there were, in fact, casualties in their handshake budget deal.

On Monday, a team from the Governor’s Office of Adminstration sent 38 employees of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) packing. The council’s authorization to continue operating expired Monday. A skeleton crew of five remained to watch over the council’s downtown Harrisburg office. But unless a resolution to a political standoff between Gov. Rendell and Senate Republicans could be reached at the 11th hour on Thursday, the remaining workers were expected to be let go before the long holiday weekend.

In terms of numbers, the loss of these jobs seems relatively insignificant within the context of a proposed $28.2 billion budget. But that loses sight of the important work the independent PHC4 does for Pennsylvanians.

For 22 years, PHC4 has battled the rising cost of health care with numbers-crunching analysis to determine what Pennsylvania workers and employers should be paying for medical services. It evaluated the outcomes of medical procedures, issued reports on hospital operations and finances, recommended policies regarding health insurance and the uninsured so lawmakers and citizens could make better decisions. Its work was valued by practically everyone with a stake in better and more affordable health care in Pennsylvania.

The nonpartisan agency, which costs the state a paltry $5 million, got caught in a political crossfire and could face permanent closure. The agency became a hostage to unrelated health care issues over which Gov. Rendell and Senate Republicans disagreed.

If it’s wrong to use the jobs of 25,000 state workers as a way to pressurize budget negotiations, it’s just as wrong to use the fate of a handful of employees of a nonpartisan agency as the sacrificial lambs in a political policy dispute. Sure, that’s sadly how politics works. But it shouldn’t.

Senate Republicans tied PHC4’s reauthorization to extension of the medical malpractice insurance extension for physicians. But Gov. Rendell wanted to tap the surplus in the Mcare Fund, which helps pay for malpractice claims, to help pay for his plan to extend health insurance to more uninsured Pennsylvanians.

The House approved Gov. Rendell’s plan but Senate Republicans disagreed with its scope and funding mechanisms. The governor and budget negotiators agreed earlier this week they couldn’t resolve how to insure the uninsured and put it off until the fall.

Also hanging unresolved is the reauthorization of PHC4. Senate Republicans made reauthorization of the agency dependent on extending the MCare abatement.

The irony of this political fight is that the very agency that has fostered informed debate so that sensible state policies on issues such as taking care of the uninsured can be formed, appears to have been silenced, at least temporarily.