ASSEMBLYMAN DROPS BILL TO BLOCK HMO.

Byline: Kermit Pattison Daily News Staff Writer

Faced with fierce objections from Ventura County leaders, a state Assembly committee has killed an attempt by Community Memorial Hospital to prevent Ventura County from establishing a managed care organization.

State lawmakers voted late Tuesday to reject consideration of a proposed bill sponsored by private Community Memorial Hospital that would have prevented the Ventura County Medical Center from setting up a health maintenance organization for Medi-Cal recipients and county employees.

"It's offensive and, in a way, abusive," Pierre Durand, director of the Ventura County Health Care Agency, said of the bill. "I hope this is the end of that because it is an expensive process."

The county has applied to the state for a Knox-Keene license to set up a managed care system for county employees and Medi-Cal recipients. Officials said the HMO would save taxpayers money because it would allow the Ventura County Medical Center to contract for cheaper medical services.

Michael Bakst, executive director of Community Memorial Hospital, said he would consider sponsoring similar legislation later this year.

Bakst said the county's managed care proposal would allow a public entity to compete with the private sector and risk millions of dollars in taxpayer funds.

"We don't want to do anything that's going to jeopardize taxpayer dollars going to the care of the poor," Bakst said. "To risk that would potentially crumble the safety net in Ventura County. We're concerned about how taxpayer dollars are used in any venture."

Community Memorial lobbyists recently approached Assemblyman David Knowles, R-Placerville, and convinced him to carry legislation which would prevent counties from getting Knox-Keene licenses for two years.

Knowles stripped a bill dealing with multiple employer trusts and rewrote it to include the proposed legislation, officials said.

The bill went before the Assembly Insurance Committee late Tuesday, where it won the support from several lawmakers.

After learning of the bill half an hour before the hearing, Sen. Cathie Wright, R-Simi Valley, said she took Knowles aside and asked him to withdraw the bill.

"He had taken an insurance bill of his and gutted it," Wright said. "They talked him into carrying the bill. He thought it was good business policy. It was a situation where he felt it was good public policy and he wanted to see a wrong righted. I told him this was an issue in Ventura County that had not been settled and suggested he didn't want to ram this through."

Knowles then agreed to withdraw the bill and the committee voted to expunge it from the record, officials said.

Knowles said he took up Community Memorial's cause because the underlying issues would eventually impact his rural northern California district.

"If I stepped on some toes in Ventura, I apologize," he said. "It's not my goal to play politics in Ventura. Before we embark on a significant new way in which government competes with the private sector and how we dispense health care, I'd like to talk about it first."

The dispute in the halls of the state legislature represents the latest chapter in a long battle between the public and private hospitals which are located just blocks apart in midtown Ventura.