Could Medicaid Cuts Kill Lompoc Valley Medical Center?

CEO Yvette Cope Sounds Alarm Over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

Lompoc Valley Hospital | Credit: Courtesy

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CHOKE ON THIS: What is it about us as a species that we immediately retreat to the nearest bathroom when we find ourselves choking to death on some errant flap of food? How does this face-saving — but clearly self-destructive — strategy translate to reproductive success?

That’s a high price for all our stupid dignity.

I’ve been chewing on this one a lot lately. In my family of origin, our gullets are genetically engineered to constrict as we age. To rectify this, some medical professional has to jam a NOAA weather balloon down our collective esophagi from time to time and blow it up. My turn has yet to come. But then, I don’t need any medically recognized predisposition to camouflage my innate stupidity. During COVID, surgical intervention was required to dislodge a walnut stuck stubbornly between my throat and digestive tract after — admittedly in a deadline hurry — I inhaled a bowl of oatmeal bulging with all the trimmings.

Talk about your loss of dignity.

Calling this to mind is the stiff-upper-lip resolve, bravery, and composure — admirable in any other context — now being exhibited by Yvette Cope, the new CEO for Lompoc Valley Medical Center, which is now in the crosshairs of near-total obliteration from all the massive Medicaid cuts included in Donald J. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB). If Cope is not a household name, she should be. In Santa Barbara County, she is the first healthcare executive to really sound the alarm over all the truly catastrophic violence about to be inflicted on our healthcare system by the fine print of Trump’s catchy fixation with alliteration and giving even bigger tax breaks to people who already make too much money.

And if the Senate version of Trump’s BBB were to pass, Lompoc Valley will absorb a disproportionate brunt of the bill. Lompoc Valley is not only the last remaining public hospital in Santa Barbara County; it is the only hospital in Santa Barbara classified by Medicare and Medicaid as a “rural hospital.” Under the existing rules of the game, rural hospitals are paid less by Medicaid and Medicare for performing the same procedures as hospitals designated as urban. To fix this obvious problem, states are allowed to tax medical providers, using the proceeds to fill the breach between true costs and real dollars. I will spare you the gory details of all the Rube Goldberg contortions, but without them, rural hospitals will be SOL.

Translated into simple math, if the Senate version of the BBB passes, Lompoc Valley will lose $21 million in critical funding in one fell swoop. Down here in the southern tip of the county, people who pretend to know about such things are dusting off their trumpets and practicing “Taps” for the funeral they say is coming. Bravely, gamely, heroically, Cope is insisting otherwise. “We have no plans to close our doors,” she says. “We are exploring all options to adapt,” she adds. “We have weathered many storms over the years,” she adds some more. “There are currently no plans to cut services.”

Why do such stout assurances make me think of someone choking to death in front of a bathroom mirror?

I get it. Panic is contagious. If Cope were to flail about with the sort of undignified abandon I seem to be suggesting, how many of the many new doctors she’s added to her hospital’s payroll will start looking for other gigs? It’s a very real concern.

I get it; $21 million sounds like a whole lot. But it’s only 13 percent of Lompoc’s total budget, right? I hear that. But what if someone told all you guys out there that they were taking away 13 percent of what you have between your legs? Would the word “only” be part of your response?

There’s nothing remotely beautiful about Trump’s big budget, and government policy should not be built around alliterative fantasies. It’s a bunker buster of a budget with as much precision as the 30,000-pound bombs Trump just dropped on Iran. Let’s do the math. In any given year, Lompoc Valley gets 23,000 ER visits. It gets 73,000 outpatient visits; its satellite clinics get 97,000 more. I don’t know how many people die there; that stat somehow was not provided. But 100 people a week rely on Lompoc Valley for cancer treatment.

How many of those visits can be dismissed as waste, fraud, or abuse?

Speaking of DOGE and Elon Musk, Lompoc Valley is on standby every time Elon blasts one of his Falcon 9 rocket ships out into space from Vandenberg. Is that just-in-case staffing waste, fraud, or abuse? Perhaps Elon — still the richest man on the planet despite his precipitous fall from grace — might have a spare $21 million hiding in his sock drawer or lurking behind his couch cushions. I believe Yvette Cope has asked. And although she is afforded the rank of honorary commander at Vandenberg, I don’t believe he ever got back to her. Maybe all those sonic booms — at last count, I think I read there have been 124 this year — have made it hard for him to hear.

Elon, phone home. Better yet, phone Yvette.

So long as Cope insists on conducting herself with all the professional dignity one expects of a hospital CEO, then maybe all the other healthcare executives in the county should join her at the podium at the next press conference. I know CenCal’s Marina Owen has, but what about you honchos from Cottage? Sutter Health, a k a Sansum? Please make some dignified noise.

If I find myself choking to death on a walnut next time I visit Lompoc, I want someone there who can perform a Heimlich maneuver. The last thing I want to see — as I draw my last gasp — is me looking back at myself in a mirror.

Thank you, Yvette.