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Show Tax initiatives may affect health care On Nov. 8, three proposed Tax Initiatives-People's Spending and Limitation Amendment, People's Tax Reduction Act, and Family Choice in Education-will appear on the voter ballots. If these initiatives initia-tives pass, the total first-year loss to the state has been estimated at $330 million-a 13 percent reduction reduc-tion in state funds. . American Fork Hospital joins with Intermountain Health Care and The Utah Hospital Association in an effort to educate the residents of our community as to how the passing of the three proposed Tax Initiatives may affect health-care in North Utah County. "Unlike many areas of state government, cuts in state healthcare health-care funds mean major cuts in matching federal funds," says American Fork Hospital Administrator Adminis-trator Craig Smedley. "According to the Utah Department of Health (UDOH), passing of the tax initiatives initia-tives could result in a loss of more than $8.8 million in state funds, and a loss of more than $19 million in matching federal funds." UDOH and the Utah Hospital Association (UHA) recently compiled com-piled reports detailing what impact these reductions could have on health care in Utah. Northern Utah County could be significantly impacted. Utah State Training School. UHA estimates that 700 children chil-dren in the Training School could have services cut, and 118 clients could have to leave the facility altogether. alto-gether. American Fork Hospital. The hospital could lose more than $260,000 annually in payments pay-ments from Medicaid. Medicaid programs that may be eliminated include the Medically Needy Program, Pro-gram, which provides assistance to lower income families and individuals indi-viduals who require long-term medical care; 'optional' Medicaid programs including same-day-surgery, pharmacy, physical therapy, speech and audiology, and psychological psycho-logical services; and the Medical Assistance Program which covers the cost of treatment for life-threatening life-threatening medical problems for those without the financial resources re-sources to pay. "A loss ofhundreds of thousands of dollars each year to the hospital may result in employee cuts and increased health-care costs, but the big losers would be the low and no income individuals and families in our community," says Smedley. .Those who rely on Medicaid to cover their health-care needs will have many critical services cut." Nursing Homes and others North Utah County would have to take its share in health-care cuts that affect every area of the state. The UHA estimates these statewide state-wide cuts as follows: 1. Handicapped services in the state training school, group homes and residential programs. 2. Family services including foster care, spouse abuse, child abuse, and self sufficiency programs. pro-grams. 3. Aging services including Meals on Wheels and nursing care of 1,100 elderly people. 4. Social Services programs which treat sex offenders at the Utah State Hospital. 5. The Utah Medical Assistance Program which covers the cost of treatment for life-threatening medical problems for 7,000 Utahns. 6. Medicaid Services including long-term care, organ transplants and optional services (alcohol and drug abuse services, ambulatory surgical, dental services, medical supplies, pharmacy, physical therapy, ther-apy, podiatrist, psychology services, serv-ices, speech and audiology services, and vision care). According to the report compiled com-piled by UHA, passage of the three tax initiatives would have a devastating devas-tating impact on many needy Utah Citizens. For every $1 cut from state funds from the Medicaid program, $3 in matching federal funds could be lost. Most social service programs cut from the state would likewise lose matching federal fed-eral funds. According to statements released re-leased by UHA officials, "These tax initiatives go too far in impacting the poor and needy.. .The net effect would be to shift the burden of the tax rollback to lower income families,. ..the handicapped, elderly, eld-erly, abused children, foster children, chil-dren, blind, and disabled citizens in Utah." |