Thursday, March 13, 2008

Random Scene From Lawmakers

The House is wading into the Grady affair and as is usual it is not very pretty.

Witness the follwing exchange in the debate on HB 1299 which would allow the state to swoop in and take control of Grady Hospital is the board is not converted to non-profit in a timely manner.

Rep Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur): Would you please specify how your safety net protects the citizens of my district that are funding $40-80 million of this funding.

Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-Cobb County): Well, Rep. Oliver apparently that is not enough and it doesn't meet what citizens from your district and your county actually...there are more patients that go and the cost is more to Grady than
what your county pays.


Rep. Cooper's argument regarding Dekalb may be true, but what is absolutely true is her county along with Clayton and Gwinnett racked up $16 million in bills at Grady in 2006 without paying one damned dime.

Grow up.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course Gwinnett is going to spend megabucks to build a minor league baseball statium.
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Anonymous said...

Just for clarification, did you mean that Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett have combined Grady bills of $16 million?

You make a good point. Forgive the ignorance of this question, but can I assume that Grady gets state funding, in addition to what they get from Fulton and Dekalb? If they do get state funding, it would be interesting to know how much money comes from the state and what percentage of total state revenues come from Clayton, Cobb, and Gwinnett. You could apply that percentage to the annual state contributions to Grady. I doubt the number would add up to $16 million but it would be interesting to see.

griftdrift said...

That was the combined cost of all three counties in 2006 according to the Georgia Hospital Association.

As far as I know Grady has received no funding from the state since 1989.

Primary funding comes solely from Dekalb and Fulton counties.

South Fulton Guy said...

Just like with MARTA, Fulton and DeKalb get the shaft while others get the services.

Instead of the legislature meddling with Fulton's governance under the guise of managing taxpayer dollars, they need to make the rest of Metro Atlanta pay for what they use.