Posted on 04/14/2007 7:32:42 PM PDT by Coleus
Financially strapped New Jersey hospitals spent $3.7 million on lob bying lawmakers and state officials last year in a mad scramble for special grants doled out at the end of the state budget process. The lobbying tab for the hospitals is nearly twice what it was just five years earlier as competition heated up for the grants, which were made at the discretion of lawmakers and the governor's office.
Part of Trenton's controversial "Christmas tree" items, the discretionary grants to hospitals totaled $112 million last year -- a huge increase from the $6 million handed out by lawmakers in 2001. The grants became even more important to hospitals because the state over the past three years hasn't added any funding to the charity care program that subsi dizes hospitals based on how many uninsured patients they treat.
"They are fighting every day for survival. It's very competitive," said veteran lobbyist Alan Marcus. About 60 percent of New Jersey's 108 hospitals hired lobbyists to plead their case in Trenton. Those with lobbyists got all but $405,000 of the $112 million in grants. While the explosion of grants has helped some hospitals remain open, it also has brought contro versy.
The U.S. Attorney's Office re cently indicted Sen. Wayne Bryant (D-Camden), former chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropria tions Committee, for allegedly fun neling millions to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in exchange for a no-work pub lic job that helped pad his pension. Nearly $1.6 million in grants received by Hackensack University Medical Center has become a focus of a related federal investigation into several budget additions for nonprofit facilities where legislators or their relatives worked and might have gotten a direct benefit.
The "Christmas tree" grant process
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
There is alot of ‘make work’ going on in the healthcare industry these days.
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