A major health care workers union offered an amendment to Maryland’s tobacco tax for health care proposal that would essentially earmark $40 million for the troubled Prince George’s Hospital system.
Funding would be $10 million per year over four years.
1199 Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers East represents more than 275,000 current and retired health care workers along the Eastern Seaboard.
Union officials were in Annapolis on Thursday proposing an amendment to the Healthy Maryland Initiative, which calls for a $1 per pack increase of Maryland’s cigarette tax, to be used for health care expansion.
“If we are going to use the cigarette tax to fund health care, an element of that has to be shoring up hospitals that are on the brink of closing or reducing services,” said Quincey Gamble, political director of 1199 SEIU Maryland/D.C. Division.
Technically, the amendment calls for the $40 million to go to hospitals where uncompensated care is more than 65 percent of their business, Gamble said. Under those terms, Gamble said, only Prince George’s Hospital system qualifies.
“It’s the linchpin to care throughout the state for the uninsured,” Gamble said.
Legislators introduced the Healthy Maryland Initiative earlier this year after a push by theMaryland Citizens’ Health Initiative, according to Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative.
“They are proposing to amend our bill and we are okay with it,” DeMarco said. “We don’t want Prince George’s, to close and we don’t want to go backwards on health care.”
Gamble said he expects to announce the legislative sponsors of the amendment today.
“This is not the first time an idea like this has been thrown out there, but it is something we would be supportive of,” said John Erzen, a spokesman for Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson.
Also today, Prince George’s County is scheduled to wire Dimensions Healthcare $5 million to keep the county hospital system fully operational through March. A spokeswoman for the hospital operator has said the system will need a $9 million infusion to continue through June.
