So, what does it take in a presidential election year for a U.S. Congressman and Republican to publicly commend a U.S. Senator and Democrat? Apparently, a story in The New York Times labeling the action of one senator to protect the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center a “special dispensation.”
The Republican is Rep. Doc Hastings, and the Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray, and both have been working to enable the medical center’s hospital to remain as a doctor-owned facility.

Some in Congress are determined to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals owned by doctors due to the conflict-of-interest in referring patients to their own hospitals, and because some are designed to cream the crop for healthier and easier patients, leaving public hospitals to deal with the more complicated, more expensive cases.

Wenatchee Valley Medical Center has always denied that’s the case with its hospital, which provides a variety of medical procedures to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. They don’t belong in the same class as other doctor-owned hospitals, they argue, because their doctors don’t receive any financial benefits from being 150th owner of the medical center. They just have some say over what kinds of ventures the medical center decides to enter into.

Hastings’ press secretary passed on an interesting article in Politico about the last-minute deal that removed the doctor-owned wording all together from the most recent bill, a 2008 Supplemental Appropriations bill dealing with war spending and several domestic funding measures.

To this by-stander, the most interesting byproduct of the issue is Hastings’ public defense of Murray, on the House floor and in a news release.

For the medical center, the problem of having a doctor-owned facility in a political climate that wants to close them all down hasn’t passed yet. Sit tight, we may see more federal lawmakers from Washington state on both sides of the aisle coming together on this one.

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