Funding has always been an issue with the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. before and after it became a corporation in 2012\u2014and it\u2019s not as if it is awash in federal funds. <\/p>\n
To say that CHCC has had a drought in terms of help coming from the CNMI government is an understatement because the hospital continues to struggle even if federal funds are at its disposal.<\/p>\n
Speaking in front of the Current Issues class of the Northern Marianas College last week, CHCC CEO Esther Mu\u00f1a said that 50 percent of the CNMI population is on Medicaid.<\/p>\n
Medicaid is a healthcare program that assists low-income families or individuals in paying for long-term medical and healthcare costs. It is a joint program of the federal government and the state or U.S. territory like the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way Medicaid works is that 50 percent is funded by the federal [government] and 50 percent by the CNMI government. If the government gives $2 million to CHCC, then [the] federal [government] will match that and give $2 million,\u201d she said<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is, if the federal [government] has $100 million in the bank, we have to match it. We have to have $100 million to get $100 million. If Medicaid is going to pay the hospital, it has to come up with $100 million in order to pay the other $100 million,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Since 2011 and up to now, from one legislative appropriation to another, CHCC has always been underfunded. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we came up with is to do the switch where we changed the Medicaid state plan to have a certified public expenditure payment. What that does is, in order for us to take or draw out $100 million from the federal government, we would base it on CHCC expenditures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo in order for us to get money from our cost of providing services to the 50 percent of the Medicaid population, we have to use the certified public expenditure, which basically takes our cost of providing services as a match to the federal share,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
No matter how CHCC is good in doing the math and turning the wheels to have a portion of the federal money, there is no denying, however, that CHCC has been losing money since 2011, Mu\u00f1a said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo understand the setup is, for example, I spend a dollar, I only get $50 cents back. The other $50 cents is lost and we cannot do anything about it because the only way for me to tap the federal share is through CPE [certified public expenditure]. This has been our payment methodology [from] 2011 to 2017,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we are not getting sufficient funding from the government, this is only revenue that we can count on and the revenue that we needed to survive. Otherwise, we won\u2019t be able to survive if nobody pays,\u201d Mu\u00f1a added.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a said the $100 million came from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and this expires in 2019 and after that it goes back to the U.S. federal fund because that\u2019s how territories are set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Funding has always been an issue with the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. before and after it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[666,26,18498,262],"class_list":["post-270140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chcc","tag-cnmi","tag-current-issues","tag-northern-marianas-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}