#ncpol: Vidant Medical picking a fight with state treasurer
How smart is that when you are trying to get the man to approve your merger with ECU Physicians? (Seriously.)
Vidant Medical Group — the biggest dog in Eastern North Carolina for healthcare delivery — is throwing down the gauntlet in the direction of state treasurer Dale Folwell. Check this out from the Facebook page for one of their properties:
Let’s see — a whole lot of exaggeration with a sprinkling of falsehood. Where to begin? Okay. Vidant is prepared to shell out nearly $500 million to buy ECU Physicians. So, they’re apparently not all that concerned about a looming income shortfall.
Folwell has made the reasonable argument time and again — if you want to do business with the state health plan, you need to tell the state what you’re billing the state and its health plan members. The state treasurer is also taking the, um, *draconian* position that hospital billings for the state health plan be capped at a maximum markup of seventy-seven percent (77%).
Seriously. Show of hands — who out there in business would be upset if your customers told you that they were okay with you charging them a 77% markup on your services?
Vidant was a major player in pushing that bill seeking a limit on Folwell’s powers as treasurer. *It’s amazing how it 
ran out of gas and died a quick death after we shed some sunlight on it.*
Folks like Vidant want things left as they are. According to Folwell’s office, the state health plan will run out of money in 2023 if nothing new is done. The burden of fixing that fiasco will be shared by ALL taxpayers — not just state employees.
Turn the tables on Vidant. Let them know they need to switch gears and work with Folwell to fix the state health plan.
Vidant has been buying up hospitals and medical practices in eastern North Carolina creating an oligopoly that is verging on a monopoly. Some local communities they turn around and screw like Belhaven when Vidant renigged on the promises they made in buying their hospital and instead turned around and closed it on them.
Citizens need someone to keep an eye on these monopolies, and who better than the State Treasurer?
Can you say MONOPOLY? Make no mistake, Vidan is about money not healthcare especially in rural NC. NC has restrictive CON laws that prohibit competition.
I say that Vidant should work with our Treasurer to assist all in the state with affordable healthcare.
I support Treasurer Folwell one hundred percent. Those politicians bought by Vidant, not so much.
Another monopoly, Blue Cross, Lowered insurance rates in the central part of the state and raised rates in the east this year. Their reason, hospitals have lower costs it the Piedmont where there is competition. Vidant spent the last 10 years lobbying for higher government pay outs from MEDICARE and MEDECAID. Vidant needs competition.
The story coming out of the GA is that they are concerned that his actions are putting them between two of their biggest supporters. As a result legislators have sought meetings to work out some kind of deal and the Treasurer hasn’t been interested. That is bad for him, regardless of whose right. It aids in finding support within the GA for an alternative he has no say in, and likely something closer to the other side.
ANY legislator who sides with crooked monopoly special interests against the taxpayers of North Carolina and their champion Dale Folwell should be removed from their legislative seats in 2020. We need to take names and kick ass. We need to have principled conservative Republicans in our caucus, not corrupt special interest Republicans.
Greg Murphy, the waterboy for Vidant, needs to be watched in particular, with his ambitions to run for Congress.
The legislator at the center of trying to push Vidant’s anti-taxpayer agenda, Rep. Greg Murphy (RINO-Pitt) is an employee of Vidant:
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Blog-3931.112112-14777.114136-RINO-Rep-Greg-Murphy-leads-attacks-on-conservative-Treasurer-Dale-Folwell.html