By Tom Johnston
Ventura County Medical Center
Here in Ventura we don’t question whether or not a public option can work. We know it can.
The Ventura County Medical Center has been redesigned to be the hub of system of interconnected public, public/private and private clinic and physician-office-based providers, all with the intent to maximize service to citizens and its employees without devotion to profit, corporate interests or CEOs.
Ventura County Medical Center works because, besides being a safety net provider of care, it is also a center of excellence that provides not only basic hospital care but also expert trauma care, orthopedics, immunology (including treatment of HIV related disease), the longest-running dedicated pediatrics unit in Ventura County and advanced care in not only oncology (cancer treatment) but also pediatric oncology, the only one of its kind in Ventura County.
Our entire system of health care is built around the Ventura County Medical Center, its allied clinic and provider system, and its County Managed Health Insurance System for employees of the County. It’s such a solid unit that it has been able to virtually break free of local County general fund revenue. (It is almost an “enterprise” unit of the County.) In addition, the medical center has purchased, renovated and actually reopened Santa Paula Hospital, a full-service community hospital in the Santa Clara Valley. The system of care continues to open new clinics, bring mobile mammography trucks to patients and seek new and unconventional ways to provide high level health care at reasonable rates if not the lowest cost to Ventura County residents.
Because of the expert care we provide here at Ventura County Medical Center the majority of SEIU 721 employees choose to receive their health care benefits from the County Managed Health Insurance System. Every day we see the success of a “public option” that is affordable, high quality and cost effective.
Come on Tom, the public option wont work. we will end up with something that has the efficiency of the DMV and the customer service of the IRS. while thier are problems with the system we have now Government Bureaucracies will not solve the issues before us, most of the money will end up it the hands of Goverment constituents where little concern for real choice will be given.