Sen. Marshall hears native considerations on federal coverage on well being care, vitality, tech

By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Put up

Sen. Roger Marshall was in Hays Friday morning to satisfy with group officers and enterprise leaders.

A number of the matters the group mentioned included well being care, vitality, broadband and wi-fi service.

Shae Veach, vp of regional operations at Hays Medical Middle, mentioned the hospital has been as busy as ever.

“We simply cannot make any cash,” he mentioned.

Pharmaceutical prices are by the roof, Veach mentioned. The hospital doesn’t profit from the 340B program, which gives monetary assist to hospitals serving susceptible communities to handle rising prescription drug prices.

Giant, rich hospitals are qualifying for this system, however HaysMed just isn’t, Veach mentioned. Marshall mentioned he would attempt to tackle that subject in Washington.

Labor prices and provide prices have elevated on account of inflation.

The price of offering companies goes up a lot sooner than reimbursement charges, he mentioned.

“We’re not the gasoline station the place we are able to simply improve our prices. That’s what we get from Medicare and Medicaid, Blue Cross and Blue Defend, and third-party payers,” he mentioned.

Veach additionally talked in regards to the addition of its baby care facility, which is able to open this fall, and the necessity for housing to recruit and retain workers.

Eric Flax, CEO First Care Clinic, mentioned the clinic’s new pharmacy, which is ready to open quickly at thirteenth and Principal in Hays, will qualify for the 340B program.

First Care already gives sliding-scale charges for sufferers for medical, dental and behavioral well being companies. This will probably be prolonged to the pharmacy when it opens, Flax mentioned.

Flax mentioned First Care additionally struggles to search out certified workers to do the front-line work, together with dentists, behavioral well being professionals and nurses.

Marshall mentioned Medicaid is so damaged, and it’ll by no means be the answer to offering well being care to these in want. He mentioned federally certified well being clinics, which incorporates First Care Clinic, are a greater answer.

Marshall mentioned a Senate committee that he’s on was capable of advance laws that might restrict pharmacy profit managers.

“They take 84 cents of each greenback for a prescription,” Marshall mentioned. … “There’s three of them. They management 90 p.c of the market. They’re vertically built-in. They personal the insurance coverage firm, the pharmacy, the retail pharmacy, and now they’re proudly owning the docs and caregivers as properly.”

“It is essentially the most horrible factor I’ve ever seen in well being care,” he mentioned.

Vitality

Ron Nelson of Dowing Nelson Oil mentioned he didn’t just like the White Home’s transfer to launch oil from the strategic petroleum reserve.

He mentioned he additionally opposes the itemizing of the lesser prairie hen as a threatened species. This might have an effect on the flexibility of oil producers to drill wells within the prairie chickens’ prime breeding floor. Marshall has additionally opposed the itemizing.

“We do not want any extra guidelines and laws,” Nelson mentioned.

Pat Parke, Midwest Vitality CEO, mentioned the utility’s lack of ability to obtain transformers is slowing native improvement. He mentioned it’s taking as much as two years to obtain the transformers.

“The manufacturing corporations are reluctant to extend their manufacturing capability now if it will be out of date in three years,” he mentioned.

Parke mentioned beneficial the Division of Vitality wait to vary its requirements so the producers can obtain a return on their funding.

He additionally mentioned something that helps housing, baby care, or rural well being care helps Midwest Vitality recruit.

He beneficial scholar mortgage forgiveness for engineers. Though he mentioned he’s a Republican, he thought the federal authorities ought to rethink its place on immigration. He steered immigrants could possibly be useful in coping with the extreme employee shortages in rural Kansas.

Though he didn’t point out immigration, Toby Dougherty, Hays metropolis supervisor, additionally talked about the necessity for extra employees in Hays.

Parke mentioned he would additionally like Kansas farmers to have alternatives to be part of carbon sequestration.

He mentioned though Midwest Vitality has taken benefit of renewable vitality, saving its prospects tens of millions of {dollars}, fossil fuels nonetheless have to be a part of the vitality system to take care of grid reliability.

As coal vegetation age out of the system, utilities are relying extra on pure gasoline. Nonetheless, the pure gasoline business is deregulated.

He pointed to energy points in Texas throughout the winter of 2021.

“We do not have good coordination of electrical and pure gasoline industries on this nation,” he mentioned.

Marshall mentioned he sees modular reactors,  that are outlined as nuclear reactors usually 300 MWe equal or much less, as a viable vitality answer for Kansas sooner or later.

Wi-fi, broadband

Jimmy Todd, Nex-Tech CEO, additionally talked about points the corporate was having with the provision chain.

Though the corporate has laid fiber, the digital parts that join customers are carrying out and are in want of substitute. Nex-Tech is struggling to acquire elements which might be manufactured abroad.

Todd mentioned corporations from exterior of the state have acquired federal funds to develop rural broadband however have not performed something in Kansas.

“They’re creating Swiss cheese out of alternatives to develop the community. That makes it very tough to make a enterprise case for constructing …”

He mentioned he was involved the newest spherical of funding just isn’t going to go the place it’s actually wanted.

Aaron Gillespie, Nex-Tech Wi-fi COO, mentioned Nex-Tech is struggling in opposition to massive corporations like Verizon and AT&T which have massively exaggerated their 5G maps.

Gillespie mentioned that they had 2.3 million challenges to Verizon and AT&T’s maps.

“We’re spending a ton of time and expertise to drive our footprint,” he mentioned

“Our objective is to guarantee that rural residents have equal expertise to their counterparts,” Gillespie added.

Precision ag has been a driver for that.

Nonetheless, Todd mentioned he has been on a federal committee that has made suggestions to the FCC and USDA on precision ag, and none of their suggestions have been carried out.