<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Lake Charles City Councilman Dana Jackson sponsored a resolution this week addressed to the state Department of Health and Hospitals expressing the city’s concerns over the possible closure of Moss Memorial Health Clinic.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The resolution was approved during Wednesday’s regular meeting, with five council members voting in support of the item. Councilman Stuart Weatherford, an employee of Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, abstained.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“We’re not saying Moss Memorial will close, but there is a possibility,” Mayor Randy Roach said. “We felt it was important that we at the city expressed our concern with that.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The conversation about the closure gained momentum late last month when Jeff Reynolds, undersecretary for DHH, told a House budget committee that the state couldn’t afford to operate all of its privatized LSU hospitals while trying to close a $750 million budget gap for the fiscal year beginning July 1.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Moss Memorial in 2013 entered into a public-private partnership with Lake Charles Memorial Hospital to preserve patient services for the city’s poor.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Rep. Mark Abraham, R-Lake Charles and a member of Lake Charles Memorial board of directors, said the other hospitals in the area could become overloaded with the displaced uninsured patients and then those facilities would also have trouble keeping their emergency rooms open.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Abraham, also a member of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, recently said the state’s proposal would defund cooperative endeavor agreements in Lake Charles, Bogalusa, Houma, Alexandria and Monroe.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Roach said he was concerned with how Lake Charles was last on the list if funding is restored to the locations and that the resolution also addresses the issue.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“What we’re asking them to do is develop some form of funding that would allow us to at least maintain some level of service at Moss Memorial,” he said. “We’re not trying to define what that level would be.”</span>

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