Voice Support

Dear Mr. Ricketts,

On July 7, Augusta Health hosted a meeting for employers to share more about the current contract negotiations between the hospital and Anthem, the business realities for both healthcare and the insurance industry, and perspectives and impacts.  It was a frank and insightful discussion.  We are disappointed that no representative from Anthem attended the meeting. 

Receiving fair reimbursement rates from private insurers such as Anthem is critical to ensuring our community hospital remains financially viable over the long term.  Like all business leaders, we have navigated significant challenges in recent times, but we realistically appreciate that Augusta Health and other hospitals have fared even worse because of unreimbursed COVID-19 costs and shortages, and competition for critical patient care team members such as registered nurses.  Unlike our businesses, Augusta Health’s revenue is fixed during these difficult times to government reimbursement and contracts with insurers like Anthem that lock reimbursement rates for years at a time.

Industry publications such as Kaufman Hall and Modern Healthcare have clearly analyzed the situation and the consensus boils down to this:  While reduced volumes during the pandemic hurt hospitals and healthcare, it benefited insurers such as Anthem.  We, like all businesses, continued to pay you premiums while you had a greatly reduced number of claims to settle.  Your earnings increased from $4,572M in 2020 to $6,104M in 2021 while Augusta Health operationally broke even only because of CARES payments from the government. 

Despite these hard economic realities, Augusta Health continued to keep the health of our community and our employees at the front of their efforts—providing more than 119,000 free vaccination doses through hundreds of clinics—some on-site in our businesses—and moving forward with an outpatient pavilion with improved services for breast care, imaging and outpatient services.  As fellow local leaders, we partner with Augusta Health on many community programs to improve health and access to care to all in our community, especially our vulnerable residents. 

As local employers, we have a vested interest to ensure the success of our community hospital. Augusta Health continues to be one of our region’s lowest cost providers of care. Given current levels of inflation, it is a tremendous advantage for our employees and their families to have access to affordable, high-quality care in our local area.

Augusta Health is much more than simply our community’s premier healthcare provider. It is an integral partner in maintaining the health and wellness of our most vulnerable populations, and they enjoy a stellar reputation among our employees as being owned and operated by neighbors they know and trust. 

This is why we are distressed to learn that you are refusing to provide fair reimbursement rates to Augusta Health – rates that would more accurately reflect the business realities of all parties. We completely support and advocate for Augusta Health in your current negotiations. We urge you to consider an equitable resolution in these negotiations, in helping to keep our community from experiencing the financial hardships we would otherwise suffer with a loss of our current lower cost healthcare services from our community-owned health system.

Sincerely,

Augusta County Business Leaders