The background of this story is twofold.
First, the stated intent of Obamacare, according to its namesake, was to ultimately bring about a single-payer healthcare system. In order for this to occur, two fundamental things must happen. The first is to destroy the middle class, the second is to create a healthcare framework dictated by a large medical/hospital system through which federal bureaucrats can force changes in the delivery of all our healthcare.
Second, Gov. Kay Ivey’s office created an advisory panel to develop a plan that they had to present to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) explaining how they were going to use the money allocated to the state in order to promote rural healthcare. Unfortunately, the Ivey team’s plan was not as impressive as that of our surrounding neighbors, resulting in a lower amount awarded to us for our rural communities. HHS’s lack of confidence was clearly related to the Ivey team’s insistence on this unusual antitrust immunity provision. In fact, Tennessee asked the Federal Trade Commission about such an approach and was advised against such immunity. Despite this commonsense response, Ivey’s advisory panel threw caution to the wind and insisted that monopolies are best.
The best for whom? My guess is that they are not best for rural Alabamians or local providers, but rather for the entities that have political power and influence, cravenly seeking more control and money to the detriment of rural communities and their vanishing providers.
Alabama Sen. Larry Stutts (R-Tuscumbia) tried fighting the worthy fight with sound data and reasoning. He was not only ignored, he was tricked by Senate leadership, and our rural citizens and hospitals will pay dearly.
On its surface, the bill seems to be an absurdity in the simple understanding that it states repeatedly that the entities acceptable to the governor‘s office cannot only create unattainable rules that the local providers can’t meet, but it can also exclude these providers and remove their capabilities in order to create a legal monopoly.
Stutts courageously insisted on better solutions (like increasing the money to rural providers who are in short supply already), but the bill’s sponsor, Alabama Sen. Donnie Chesteen (R-Geneva), pulled the rug from under Stutts after an agreement was made between him, the governor’s office, and Chesteen on acceptable amendments. Thirty minutes before the bill was introduced in the Senate, however, Stutts was informed that an important, agreed-upon amendment had been removed.
In the end, despite President Trump’s attempt to provide over $1 billion to rural Alabamians over the next five years for their local providers and hospitals in order to improve healthcare, the greed of the powers-that-be couldn’t be ignored or satiated. They now have carte blanche to eliminate competition and consume more authority and control of our lives.
Congratulations to Ivey, the supermajority Republican legislature, and the behemoth medical-industrial-complex for your massive step in furthering Obama’s goal! Sadly, the rest of us will pay a heavy toll.
Dr. Tankersley is a fourth-generation physician serving in the Montgomery area. He also served on three deployments in the U.S. Army’s Medical Corp, retiring in 2021 as a Colonel in the Alabama Army National Guard. In 2012, Gov. Robert Bentley appointed him to a five-year term on the Alabama Ethics Commission, and in 2020, Gov. Kay Ivey appointed him to the state’s vaccine working group. Besides being involved in church activities, Dr. Tankersley enjoys reading and spending time with his family.