Posted on 05/06/2008 10:26:41 AM PDT by Puppage
Bridgeport (WTNH) _ Mayor Bill Finch says he has a plan that will save the health clinics in Bridgeport schools.
Proposed budget cuts would have closed the health centers, leaving the most vulnerable students without proper healthcare. To keep them running, but with less money, Finch says they are outsourcing the work.
"The model that we're proposing would have the health centers operated by an outside entity," Mayor Finch said at a morning press conference.
The outside entity will most likely be a hospital or health center. A newly formed committee will be reviewing proposals within the next three weeks.
"Make sure that the services provided to our children here in Bridgeport do not diminish at all," explained Alanna Kabel, Bridgeport Dep. Chief Admin. Officer.
The controversial proposed budget cuts take $5-million away from the school system, effectively ending the school-based health centers. City officials say the "outside entity" would be able to do the same job cheaper because it's already in the healthcare business.
"Well, if you think about it, we sort of created a stand alone system with its own fixed costs that it has to cover and a lower billing rate and, by the way, not a very high enrollment," Finch said.
Similar models already exist in Norwalk, New Haven, Hartford, Norwich and Stamford.
Contraception and abortion must always be available. It’s a right you know. /sarcasm
As far as real health care goes, I would seriously suggest their contacting, of all people, Wal-Mart. This is because Wal-Mart is right now very interested in creating “store-clinics”, where people can get typical outpatient care.
As a new business model, Wal-Mart would probably offer extremely good terms to the school district, and provide much better than typical care as well, seeing this as an expansion model to what they are already planning. From a business point of view, it would be worth its weight in gold to Wal-Mart just to find out if it is practical.
The school district could negotiate all kinds of individual and group care, to include vaccinations, drug tests, even health instruction support and “housecall” student health services—that is, having Wal-Mart medical personnel visit the schools on a regular basis to provide supplies and assistance to the school nurse.
The bottom line is that this could provide better care at a lot less cost to the school district; and Wal-Mart would not only get to try out what might turn into a nationwide business model, but get an “invested clientele” of students many of whom would want to continue getting their health care from Wal-Mart.
Win-win-win.
Except for mandatory situations, like vaccinations, schools have long been providing things like free meals and shoes to children whose families cannot afford it. The pragmatic reasons are that children who are hungry cannot learn as well. In addition, many students have nutritionally incomplete food provided by their parents. If they can avoid vitamin deficiency as a child, they will generally lead a much healthier and productive life.
I do see a big advantage to a school district subcontracting health services to a corporation. To start with, it stops the government from trying to provide health care directly, so economically, it is less socialist than economically fascist.
I specifically recommended Wal-Mart because I have high hopes that Wal-Marts “store-clinic” idea will catch on, providing a very less expensive alternative to socialized medicine proposed by the three candidates. Socialized anything cannot compete with the free market equivalent, so it would become a major stumbling block to socialized medicine.
Finally, if students get good health care from Wal-Mart, and at low prices, once they graduate they will probably want to stay with Wal-Mart instead of supporting government health care.
So a lot of good could come out of it in the long run.
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