Hello. I’m Mike Dennison, a Helena-based reporter who has covered Montana politics for more than 30 years. Send tips to NewsTips@kff.org.
By Mike Dennison
Hospitals have spent years amassing political influence at the federal and state levels. According to the nonprofit OpenSecrets, hospitals and nursing homes’ federal lobbying spending rose from $35 million in 2000 to more than $133 million last year, a 280% increase.
They recently had a unique opportunity to flex some of that political muscle in Montana, where the state’s Medicaid expansion program was scheduled to expire in June unless legislators and the governor renewed it.
Conservative lawmakers and groups saw an opportunity to terminate or narrow the Medicaid expansion program that cost about $1 billion in federal and state taxpayer money last year to cover tens of thousands of low-income adults.
Ultimately, the conservative Republican lawmakers who occupy state House and Senate leadership positions sought to add requirements to the program or receive concessions from hospitals, such as a promise to bolster their community benefit spending, in return for continuing the program that provides them with revenue.
What was expected to be one of the more contentious debates of the legislative session never happened. The Medicaid expansion renewal bill sailed through with little difficulty and few changes.
The hospitals spent the last year working to form a coalition with businesses, health clinics, physician groups, insurers, and advocates for people with low incomes to push for extension of Medicaid expansion, which provides government health coverage to about 74,500 low-income, nondisabled Montanans. That work paid off when Democratic and moderate Republicans lawmakers joined forces to push the bill through.
Hospital lobbyists, led by the Montana Hospital Association, not only helped steamroll Medicaid expansion through the legislature, but they also defeated nearly all attempts to add new requirements to the program and to place new regulations on the hospitals themselves.
The hospitals’ political pull is acknowledged by frustrated conservative lawmakers who contend that the facilities, most of which are nonprofit organizations largely exempt from state and federal taxes, need more oversight and transparency. As Republican state Sen. Greg Hertz put it, “Hospitals don’t seem to want to come to the table to discuss anything, whether it’s transparency, controlling costs, or providing more information to the public on services.”
Hospitals say they’re willing to debate ways to improve health care in Montana. But when it comes to regulations they regard as onerous — or lawmaker criticism that they are uncooperative — they aren’t shy about pushing back. “I think that we’ve demonstrated that we work on all kinds of health policies,” said Montana Hospital Association president and CEO Bob Olsen.
