“Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste”
Crisis – this is the word that the supporters of the upcoming tax to be voted on in Grady County on February 9th throw around most when trying to win support for their cause. And I get it; we are facing a crisis and so I will be upfront and say that I will be voting for the sales tax on February 9th. My reasons for doing so will sound familiar to many: Grady County needs surgery facilities accessible in times of emergency, any rural community that wishes to thrive needs a full service hospital, and as one of its largest employers, the success of Grady Memorial is key to the economic future of Chickasha (not to mention my own selfish reason in that I have a number of friends and people close to me who work at Grady Memorial Hospital and I want them to keep their jobs). And since this campaign has become all about pulling on the heart strings, I will give you a personal reason why I want the Grady Memorial Hospital to have functioning surgical facilities. I received notification that the monthly premium on my family’s health insurance increased effective the beginning of this year. I now pay out of pocket $758.26 each month for coverage for my wife and children. Despite this fact, my wife was informed that medical procedures at Five Oaks for her and my children would now be considered “out of network.” When she attempted to find out why this was the case, the only answer she received was that Five Oaks is in the process of negotiating with our insurance provider. When I mentioned this concern to an employee at Grady Memorial, the response that I received was that the reason that the insurance provider was hesitant to keep Five Oaks in network was because of a lack of local surgical facilities. This response seemed reasonable to me and underscores the fact that many residents of Grady County are facing real threats to their level of healthcare services.
One thing that concerns me about this tax, however, is the total amount of money that it is forecasted to generate. Allow me to explain my reasons for this concern. My former academic advisor from graduate school, who remains one of my closest friends, was born and raised in Chicago and is largely a product of the old Richard Daley machine. I know that this is a horrible admission for a Republican candidate in Oklahoma to make, but I have so many faults, that I don’t need to add lying to the list. Anyway, while in graduate school, my faculty advisor and I would go out for dinner every Saturday evening where we could talk about politics and history for hours on end. Needless to say, given the fact that he was a Daley Democrat and I a Paleo Conservative, when it came to politics our discussions could become fairly heated. Once, after I had berated him concerning the corruption of the Daley machine he responded as follows: “Mr. Crow, what you have to understand is that in order to get things done, you must sometimes build a coalition, which requires providing ‘incentives’ to key constituents – union bosses, precinct chairs, etc.” He then went on to explain that in Chicago the Daley machine usually figured adding about 30% to the cost of a project as a price one had to pay in order to get things done. Needless to say, I was shocked at his analysis. It confirmed what I had always thought about Democrats (and Richard Daley Democrats in particular): they were wasteful, corrupt and abused the trust of their fellow citizens.
Recently, after reading an advertisement paid for by the “Friends of Grady Memorial Hospital” that I received in the mail I was reminded of the shady math employed by the old Daley machine. The advertisement explains how if the residents of Grady County fail to support this tax, “there is a good chance” that the hospital will close. And then the advertisement goes on to offer a number of good reasons why this is the case. The truth be told, the arguments seemed reasonable to me and I have no reason to dispute them. And as I have already noted, I am certainly willing to pay higher taxes in order to save the hospital. What puzzles me, however, is that the advertisement clearly states “the money generated from the sales tax will go towards building a new $14 million Surgical and Radiology Center that meets and exceeds all government standards, and will position GMH for the future.” Let me be on record – I’m all for supporting a tax that would go exclusively for building this Surgical and Radiology Center, if that is what it takes to save the Hospital. Now, if we were to apply the shady mathematics of the Chicago Daly machine to this figure we would have to add an additional 30% (around $5 million) to the cost – which would bring us to a total of $19 million. So if we were to hand over this project to the old Mayor Daley (the Republican poster child for Democrat corruption) he could have accomplished the project for $19 million.
However, as Grady Memorial administrators and supporters of the tax have made clear, the tax is forecasted to generate around $40 million. Others have made, what to me seem convincing arguments, that the tax is likely to generate between $60 and $80 million, and a few have projected that it will generate even more. For the sake of argument, however, let us take the lowest of these figures -- $40 million. That’s over twice as much as it would have cost if we would have handed it over to the Daley machine. I never thought that I would see the day that community leaders in Oklahoma – many of them my fellow Republicans – would advocate public policy that was more profligate with taxpayers’ money than the Democrat Daily Machine of Chicago. I understand that some of the extra cost will likely go to paying off the interest on bonds taken out to finance this building project or some other legitimate expenditure. But couldn’t such costs have been kept much lower by simply raising the tax a little and paying off the bonds quicker – thereby saving the tax payers money? A more important consideration, however, is that when one reads the details of what the tax will fund, you will find that money is allotted to expenses that have nothing to do with the Surgical and Radiology Center needed to save the hospital. For example, a portion of the money raised by this tax will go to Tuttle’s EMS services. Are Tuttle’s EMS services also in jeopardy? Is this also threatening the survival of Grady Memorial Hospital? Or is this just as, the late Mayor Richard Daily would say, “the cost of doing business”?
As I keep saying, I support using tax dollars to support the building of a new surgical and radiology center in order to keep the hospital open. But by transferring an additional $20, $40, or $60 million worth of wealth from the taxpayers of Grady County to certain medical and medical support facilities, when competing facilities exist, is placing the government in the role of picking winners and losers in the supposed free market system. And that is a very precarious positon to put government in.
The “Friends of Grady Memorial Hospital” (the organization, not people who simply like Grady Memorial Hospital), admonish the people in their advertisements to “save our hospital, save our community, save lives.” By evoking these alarming cries some of those behind this organization remind me of another infamous Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel. Prior to becoming mayor of Chicago, Emanuel served Barak Obama as his chief of staff. As Obama pondered how he would deal with the financial crises of 2008, Rahm Emanuel advised him, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Eight years later our nation is saddled with a $20 trillion debt. Now Grady County is facing a crisis – I have not denied this. We are facing a crisis that even the “Friends of Grady Memorial Hospital” tell us requires a $14 million fix. But not letting a good crisis go to waste, they intend to get their hands on many millions of dollars more of Grady county taxpayers’ money. And why should they not expect their tactic to work. It has worked often enough in the past. And I suspect we will see other “organizations” use the same tactic again in the near future.
Kevin Crow
Published in The Beacon, February 2016 and also published as an editorial in the Chickasha Express-Star