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Falcione: Competition is key

• Paving the way for increased competition is a step toward reducing health care costs in Albany, a a consumer products industry official tells Albany Rotarians.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — Health care costs and a state tax on energy are two things making it harder for Albany’s Procter & Gamble plant to compete, a company official said Tuesday.

Vince Falcione, director of external communication’s at the Procter & Gamble Paper Products Co. in Albany, provided data showing that health care costs for employees at the Albany plant are 36 percent above the average and 52 percent above costs at Augusta’s P&G plant.

Officials with Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, at which local discussions of health care costs are usually targeted, have presented data that shows its prices are in line or below that of others.

While many manufacturing jobs have been outsourced overseas, “We (P&G-Albany) are losing (business) to plants that are elsewhere in the United States,” Falcione said Tuesday during a noon presentation to the Dougherty County Rotary Club.

P&G corporate isn’t concerned with where its company expands, Falcione said, but “selfishly” he wants the growth in Albany.

“We are not being competitive when it comes to our costs ... on health care and energy tax,” he said.

Falcione was supported in his message by Chris Thelen of Miller Brewing Co. in Albany. P&G and Miller are on the Coalition for Competitive and Affordable Healthcare (CACH), a 50-member organization aiming to reduce health care costs for residents as a way to sustain and attract industry.

Falcione conceded that health care costs at Palmyra Medical Centers’ are in line with those at Phoebe, but said Phoebe remains the primary source for care for many Southwest Georgians.

Although the hospital and the Hospital Authority of Albany-Dougherty County have offered to meet with plant officials in order to talk about health care costs at the plant, P&G representatives have declined.

In a March 4 letter to authority Chairman Ernest Benson, Falcione wrote that, “We are not in a position to be able to begin participating in multiple direct negotiations with health care providers.” In that letter, Falcione added that Anthem, which provides the administrative services for medical benefits at P&G-Albany, would be able to have those discussions.

On Tuesday, he said that Anthem and Phoebe have met and “that conversation is already in place.”

“Everybody that has Anthem has to benefit. Everybody,” Falcione said.

Falcione added that plant officials “still want to meet (with Phoebe) to talk about other things,” such as transparency and competition.

To that end, Falcione said recent action taken by the General Assembly to update some Certificate of Need requirements is a step toward increased competition and, thus, reduced health care costs.

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