For Some, Money in Dispute Should Go Only to Health Care

Phillip Tucker likes to keep up with current events. But since his diagnosis with neck cancer 10 weeks ago, staying alive has overshadowed everything else for the 58-year-old jazz pianist from Oxnard.

Hooked to intravenous tubes at Ventura County Medical Center, Tucker conceded he didn’t know the first thing about the health care controversy that erupted a week ago, when Community Memorial Hospital announced plans to strip the county and its only public hospital of $225 million in tobacco settlement funds.

Like several other patients at the public hospital, who would be the ones most directly affected, Tucker was hearing details of the battle over the tobacco money for the first time.

He and the others said they didn’t care much about the long-running feud between Community Memorial and the county hospital. Nor had they given much thought to ideological arguments over whether the money should go to public or private health care providers.

But they did share two opinions: They believed the county’s public hospital should get the tobacco settlement funds. And the county Board of Supervisors should promise to use the money only for health care programs.

Community Memorial’s plan is to place an initiative on the November ballot taking the tobacco settlement from the county and giving it to private health care providers, including Community Memorial. Officials at Community Memorial say the county’s ongoing financial problems show the Board of Supervisors can’t be trusted to spend the money wisely.

Patients interviewed said they would not support the ballot initiative in its current form. Still, two patients believed private hospitals should have access to tobacco settlement funds, so long as they use the money to expand care for the underinsured.

“If it’s taxpayer money, it should benefit taxpayers, and they go to all the hospitals,” said Debbie Leslie, 38, of Ventura, who is being treated for breast cancer.

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Leslie, who is covered by Medi-Cal, said she delivered her two children at Community Memorial. She is being treated at the Medical Center only because her physician recommended oncologists who work there, she said.

Carol Brink, 53, of Ventura, is less charitable toward Community Memorial. She said that is the first place she went when she discovered a lump in her groin in 1995, which turned out to be lymphoma. Because she had no insurance, she said, the private hospital told her, “We suggest you go across the street” to the county hospital, where the majority of the area’s indigent patients are treated.

Still, she believes Community Memorial might have been willing to accept her if it had more money to offset the costs of providing indigent care. (Michael Bakst, Community Memorial’s executive director, said he knew nothing about the woman’s complaint, but said the hospital’s policy is to not turn anyone in need away.)

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Ray Chambers, 55, a commercial fisherman, diabetic and ex-smoker who survived his second heart attack last weekend, said he would like to see the Medical Center get the money exclusively. The county hospital took Chambers when private hospitals wouldn’t, he said. And he suspects even if they were receiving tobacco settlement supplements, private hospitals would continue to refer him to the county. “These people are great,” he said of his doctors at the Medical Center. “They saved my life.”

Tucker said he doesn’t know whether private hospitals should have access to the funds, but said he doesn’t believe it would be fair to prevent the county hospital from receiving the money. “I’m quite sure this hospital needs the funds,” he said.

Moreover, Tucker, whose smoking caused his cancer, wants the county to dedicate money specifically to treatment for smokers, and to anti-smoking campaigns for children. “So they don’t start,” he said.