The North Carolina Senate’s proposed budget for the next two fiscal years includes significant health policy initiatives that are certain to rankle hospital leaders across the state.
The spending plan, which calls for allocating $29.8 billion in the coming fiscal year and $30.9 billion the following year, could greatly alter the health care landscape across the state with more private medical centers for dialysis, MRI scanning, cancer radiation and ambulatory surgical care cropping up in new locations and gives larger health care systems more power to expand.
In addition, those large systems might find themselves answering more to the state treasurer.
The Senate’s proposed budget would put the state’s hospitals in the position of having to cut costs in the health plan for state employees by $125 million beginning in 2024..
If the state’s largest hospitals fail to find that savings, the budget plan comes with a potent threat: urban hospitals not bearing some of the burden of those savings would find their licenses to operate revoked, effectively putting them out of business.
“The Senate Budget gives the state treasurer more cost control levers to achieve savings for the state health plan, such as reimbursing lower priced premiums for state employees and their dependents who opt to purchase health coverage outside of the state health plan,” Sen. Ralph Hise, (R-Spruce Pine), said during a briefing with reporters Monday afternoon.
State Treasurer Dale Folwell...
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