What do Obama’s health care law (the A◊ordable Care Act) and Benton County’s proposed Rural Ambulance Ordinance (and fee) have in common?
They have both produced as many questions as answers!!
At this point, probably like most people, I have given up trying to understand the A◊ordable Care Act. If Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) can’t understand it and she voted for it, there isn’t much hope for me. Why the people in her California House District keep re-electing her when she supports legislation she hasn’t read ba◊es me. The GOP majority in the House and GOP minority in the Senate keep talking and trying to clarify the limitations of the Act, but they do not represent enough votes to actually change anything, so we will deal with its benefi ts and limitations for at least three years. It is unfortunate that we can’t start a petition to allow the public to vote on it as we seem to have accomplished with the Rural Ambulance Ordinance.
A former Benton County elected o◊cial, Theresa Pockrus, has led the questioning of the proposed $85 dollar “fee” to pay for rural ambulance service.
This lady understands government - county government anyway - as well as anyone I met in my time on the Quorum Court.
She now has a law degree and her spirit of requiring accountability at the legislative level is calling into question some key points about this ordinance. Such as “why wasn’t it broughtto a vote of the rural voters in the first place ?”
The members of the Quorum Court voted 9 to 6 to pass the Ordinance and I’m sure the nine supporters truly feel the need to provide this emergency medical service to the unincorporated area of Benton County. The next question is “how best to pay for it fairly.” They can even correctly talk about public hearings and seeking input from their constituents.
And, no doubt the nine in favor will talk about the lack of public opposition at meetings when this was discussed. To those who want to blame public apathy, I would counter with a responsibility of the Quorum Court members (as with all elected o◊cials) to seek out comments from those they represent rather than sit back and expect the voting public, who has gotten tired of providing input only to see it ignored, to come to them.
When Northeast Benton County Fire Department proposed a $100 ambulance fee to be added to the tax bill for improved real estate property, the vote was so closely divided that, according to the newspaper report, only four votes separated the support from the opposition. If the $85 fee is actually implemented, the people in the NEBCO area will actually be paying a $15 premium based on those four supporting votes. As Imentioned in a previous article I could not vote in the election but will be a◊ected by the fee.
Unlike the NEBCO ordinance/vote, I will be able to vote in any election on the proposed $85 fee. The unincorporated area we live in is served by the Pea Ridge Fire Department through its ambulance service and we pay our Pea Ridge Fire Department dues on our water bill. Most of the people in the unincorporated area that I know who are in the Pea Ridge service area, but not on the water lines, pay a yearly fee voluntarily to the Fire Department. I am told, however, the Fire Department does not get a 100 percent response to their fee statement.
What I find missing in the Quorum Court decision to pass the fee ordinance is the knowledge of how the ambulance billing (fees) is actually handled in various areas of the county. A justice of the peace representing an area completely in or with more than 75 percent of their constituents in a city with ambulance service is going to want fi nancial support for their existing ambulance service. If any e◊ort has been made to keep track of how many patients from unincorporated areas received service from that particular ambulance service, the results apparently did not appear in any of the newspaper articles I read. After my six years on the Quorum Court, I understand how much work goes into each ordinance.
However, the expected revenue is apparently nearly $1.1 million and that is a lotof households and the equitable distribution of the household fees is going to be di◊cult to establish.
The way the ordinance reads, the ambulance service is also allowed to bill the patient, their insurance carrier or Medicare or Medicaid if they make a service run. That is the practice currently, but I didn’t see any numbers on how much is collected from those sources. I have read as much information as I could glean from the newspaper and the ordinance. What I do not fi nd is how the money will be fairly distributed to the cities if it is collected. I’m sure a lot of information was discussed in the meeting and not all of the specifics can be reported in the papers. And, I also know about attempts to go on line to get meeting information and that minutes must be approved before they are “posted.” Unless that has changed, the delay can cause one to lose track of the progress of an ordinance. Thank heaven for Mrs. Pockrus and the groups that have circulated the petition to keep this issue alive. It certainly will require more than this article to clarify some of these questions. Maybe we can contribute to a healthy debate if nothing else.
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Editor’s note: Leo Lynch is an award-winning columnist. He is a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 12/11/2013