HCA Chief Calls U.S. Healthcare Policy a National Disgrace

HCA Chairman and Chief Executive Jack Bovender said the country needs a national strategy and commitment to address problems due to the tens of millions of citizens who don’t have healthcare insurance.

“It’s a national disgrace that a nation this rich has 47 million people walking around without health insurance, and we need a national strategy and a national commitment to fix that,” he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published today.

Bovender said Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA had about $1 billion in expenses related to charity care, uninsured discounts and bad debt in 2003. In 2006, that expense climbed to about $5 billion. The company’s 170 hospitals and 113 outpatient centers represent about 5 percent of the nation’s hospital service.

Healthcare industry experts expect charity care and bad debt expense to rise as more Americans become responsible for a greater percentage of their medical care costs. To help curb HCA’s expense, Bovender said HCA is trying to collect more from patients when they receive service, help them get qualified for Medicaid or other programs and set patients up with discounted payment plans. He and other executives at HCA also are actively advocating for a solution to the problem.

“I’m spending a lot of my time in Washington now,” he said. “I am hopeful that we can get something done, and I’m not going to assume defeat in this before 2009 when we have congressional elections and a new president. I consider it a significant part of my job.”

Bovender said he admires states that are trying to provide health coverage for more of their residents. But he hopes the country doesn’t “end up with a patchwork quilt as we try to attack this problem,” he told the Journal. “I think the federal government really needs to have a program that reaches across all states and uses the existing assets that we’ve got — insurance plans and other parts of the plan that work — to fix this. We certainly don’t need a one-payer system.”