PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Ignored lottery prizes fund indigent care

Texas winners who don't claim their winnings are helping to pay for health care for the poor.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Nov. 4, 2002.

During the past three years, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has been able to take care of nearly 25,000 indigent patients.

That's 8,300 more people a year than they would be able to see otherwise, thanks to the folks who play lottery games but don't collect their winnings.

Unclaimed lottery prizes in Texas reached $57.2 million for the two-year period that began on Sept. 1, 2000, and ran through Aug. 31, 2002, with $40 million set aside for UTMB -- the largest general hospital owned by the state that offers tertiary care.

Richard Moore, vice president for business and administration at UTMB, said the state's decision in 1999 to earmark this money for indigent care came at a time that the federal government was slashing Medicaid payments and the state's number of uninsured patients was rising.

UTMB gets the money in monthly payments from the fund as it submits charges for unreimbursed medical care. Total payments are limited to $20 million a year. Actual costs are much higher, Moore said, with the lottery money helping to defray losses instead of paying for new services.

The Legislature reviews authorization for the funds every two years. Uncollected lottery prizes above the $40 million cap go into another fund, of which 90% reimburses hospitals for uncovered tertiary and stabilization care, 5% for extraordinary emergency care and 5% for the County Indigent Health Care program. For the 2000-01 state biennium, $17.2 million was divided among 132 hospitals. [...]

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