Hospitals need help in the state budget

While the state budget process continues to move ever so slowly, there is an urgent need for Gov. Tom Wolf and our legislative leaders to produce a budget that provides essential funding for Pennsylvania hospitals.

Western Pennsylvania hospitals are already struggling and any additional funding cuts from the state would be devastating. For example, for the first six months of this fiscal year, the Healthcare Council of Western Pennsylvania found that 40 percent of the region’s hospitals had a loss from operations.

For hospitals to continue to provide access to specific services such as mobile breast cancer screening programs and free dental care, we need to make sure that the Wolf administration’s proposed funding cuts for rural hospitals, burn care, obstetrics-gynecology and neonatal care are not adopted in the budget.

In addition, hospitals cannot sustain additional proposed cuts of $130 million. Historically, hospitals in Western Pennsylvania have been economic drivers. In our communities, hospitals are among the largest employers.

The hospital community would like to thank House Speaker Mike Turzai, House Majority Leader Dave Reed, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman and Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati for their support of improved funding in the Republicans’ proposed budget.

Access to care and economic sustainability are at great risk with proposed budget cuts. We urge the Legislature and the governor to restore this critical funding to our hospitals and communities. A.J. HARPER

President Healthcare Council of Western Pennsylvania

Marshall

No tobacco tax hike

Here we go again. Pennsylvania is facing another budget crisis and the governor is proposing an increase in tobacco taxes as a way out.

Hopefully, the no-tax proposal put forth by the state Legislature will prevail and the governor will come to realize what everyone seems to know about tobacco taxes; they are not an effective revenue source. The path to a strong economy is to curtail spending and find reliable revenue streams thatdonothurtbusiness.

Tobacco sales are a significant part of a retailer’s revenue, and Western Pennsylvania retailers will get hurt the most. Ohio recently raised its cigarette tax to $1.60 per pack, identical to Pennsylvania’s, giving western border retailers price parity with Ohio for the first time in six years. No longer will adult consumers have an incentive to cross state lines to make their convenience-store purchases.

Most retailers are continuing the slow climb out of the 2008 recession. Now is not the time to raise taxes on these products. It’s time to say enough and reject these higher taxes. GARY GLOECKL

Owner AJ Silberman & Co.

Indiana Township

We welcome your opinion

Gov. Tom Wolf, in explaining his veto of the liquor privatization bill, said that by keeping the state’s Liquor Control Board monopoly, the customers of Pennsylvania would get better prices and the state would make more profit than private enterprise licenses and fees could generate, all while preserving good-paying jobs.

Economics professors across the state, listen up. Gov. Wolf has unveiled a new economic theory. No doubt the governor will be in the running for a Nobel Prize in economics this year with his Wolfonomics theory. The state could become the sole owner and operator of gasoline stations.

This would deliver low-cost gasoline while generating thousands of good-paying jobs and delivering millions of dollars to the state coffers. You would be able to buy your gasoline at state-run stores sporadically distributed throughout your community at convenient hours, say 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. most days of the week and sometimes on Sundays, but not holidays.

But, wait, there’s more! The state, through the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board, already controls the floor on milk pricing. Why not have a state monopoly of owned and operated milk stores?

PennDOT employs hundreds of contractors to do its construction work. Stop that practice and let PennDOT staff up and do its own construction work. That too would generate thousands of good-paying jobs and stop our tax money from going to private contractors.

The opportunities are limited only by our imagination (and politics).

Soon we will be the richest state in the union, with no taxes and full employment.

There is one caveat, though. It makes no sense. TERRY LEE

McCandless