Community Memorial’s Proposal Gains Favor

Community Memorial Hospital is gathering support for its plan to take away Ventura County’s tobacco settlement, now estimated to pay out as much as $260 million over 25 years, and turn it over to private health-care providers.

All seven private hospitals in the county agree they should get a piece of the tobacco settlement, although some leaders are not yet comfortable with the plan to exclude the county’s public hospital from the mix, a spokesman for a group that represents the hospitals said Tuesday.

James Lott, vice president of the Healthcare Assn. of Southern California, said his organization won’t formally endorse Community Memorial’s proposed initiative until each hospital’s board of directors takes a position on it. But without any counteroffer from the county, he said, it is “real difficult” for private hospitals not to support it.

“I don’t think the private-sector hospitals are locked into a position that says they get all the money,” Lott said. “But right now, that’s all that’s on the table.”

The association’s endorsement could lend financial aid and credibility to Community Memorial’s campaign, said a spokesman for the Ventura hospital.

“It takes it out of the realm of the personal, which is where supervisors want this debate to dwell,” said Mark Barnhill. “They want to say it’s about personalities or a particular hospital’s agenda. It’s never been about that, and this underscores that fact.”

Lott said he is scheduled to meet later this week with acting county Chief Administrative Officer Harry Hufford to discuss any potential for a compromise. Barnhill said Community Memorial was also open to talks with the county but had no intention of withdrawing its initiative effort.

Hufford could not be reached for comment.

But Supervisor John K. Flynn said he doesn’t think the other six hospitals ultimately will endorse the initiative. Their overture is more likely a tool to see whether they can get some money out of the county without an initiative, he said.

“I doubt they would go that way,” he said of an endorsement. “There are too many mixed interests there. They don’t all get along. They just don’t. And there is a real distrust of Community Memorial Hospital by many private hospitals.”

County leaders have bitterly opposed the proposed initiative unveiled two weeks ago by the hospital’s executive director, Michael Bakst, who for years has been in a political war with Ventura County Medical Center, the public hospital. It would ask voters in November to block the county and its public hospital from spending any of the settlement funds, instead directing all money to the private hospitals to pay for indigent care.

Organizers say they plan to begin collecting signatures this month to qualify the initiative for the November ballot.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday met in private with lawyers for the second time to discuss legal strategy that might either keep the initiative from the ballot or render it moot. Supervisors declined to discuss the details of that meeting.

The health-care association was not involved with Measure X, Community Memorial’s successful 1996 ballot initiative that blocked construction of a new wing at the county hospital. Lott said his group may get involved in this year’s proposal because it is more broadly based.

Lott acknowledged some uneasiness about the proposal among his membership.

“We do have some concerns within the ranks that the county was excluded from the initiative,” he said. “People quiver a little on the fact that there’s this apparent war going on. They’d much prefer to be collaborative than confrontational.”

However, he said, “Right now, the only proposal on the table is Community Memorial’s initiative, and 95% of it is right on target.”

Lott and Bakst both said they won’t rest until the money is committed to health-care funding. Although supervisors have pledged verbally to direct settlement money to health care, they have yet to adopt an ordinance binding their spending.

Meanwhile, they already have spent $3.1 million to help pay off a federal settlement over bad Medicare billing and directed that another $7.5 million be set aside to help make up a shortfall in the county’s budget.

Bakst said using the settlement to pay off debts shows the county isn’t committed to health-care spending.

Hufford has argued that a Medicare fine is a health-care cost and pointed out that under the terms of Bakst’s plan, private hospitals would be able to use the money for their own legal costs.

Lott said the county’s recent fiscal troubles and mismanagement of federal health-care funds gives its leaders a disadvantage going into the November elections.

“The county has a real image problem to turn around,” he said. “It is a bad year for them. Community Memorial has everything in its favor.”

Last week, Community Memorial’s lawyers suggested they would sue supervisors, claiming that they improperly campaigned against the measure on county time. Those legal threats appeared to have tempered supervisors’ comments at Tuesday’s meeting.

Flynn, who recently compared Bakst to a train robber, read excerpts of a book by David Broder in which the journalist criticizes the initiative process.

“I’m not allowed to talk here about any [measures] involving the ‘I’ word,” Flynn said, referring to a law that forbids supervisors from commenting on local initiatives affecting the county. “But nothing prevents me from talking about a book.”