Mark Sanchez: You're seeing higher healthcare costs as you have for many, many years and they just keep going up. As somebody said to me the other day, health insurance is expensive because healthcare is expensive. And what we posted here this week at, on our website for Crain’s Grand Rapids Business, is basically the rate proposals for 2026 for the small group market here in Michigan, these are small businesses of 50 and fewer employees. And the proposals well, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has proposed a statewide average increase of 11.2% in premiums for PPO policies. These are policies that will renew in 2026. Blue's HMO subsidiary Blue Care Network 12.4% proposed increase to state regulators. And then Priority Health here in Grand Rapids, which is about the second largest health plan health insurer here in Michigan comes out a little bit better, 9.74% increase proposed for priority health for the HMO and point of service policies. The PPO policies for priority health by its subsidiary priority health insurance company, it's proposing comparatively better 7.01% rate increase for 2026. And there are other proposals that we just took a look at, such as Health Alliance plan has an 8.5% increase proposed. And a big one, United Health Insurance Company, one of the big national carriers, filed for a 16.2% increase. So, the bottom line, while Priority may look a little better than the recent past, health care costs just keep going up. Again, these are rate proposals to the State Department of Insurance and Financial Services. The regulators will review these over the coming months. If they need to make adjustments, they will. And typically, these proposals, rates get approved, come fall just before the start of the open enrollment process. But bottom line again, it's just more and more costs for small businesses and these costs are beginning to take a toll. We also got some data in this week from the Small Business Association of Michigan that does a survey, and it surveyed members there in May, about 300 small business owners. And it showed that these higher health care costs are really now the top concern among small business owners and half say they've had to reduce or eliminate benefits due to costs. And there are some other interesting, maybe even troubling findings in this. Ninety percent say the health insurance is a valuable benefit for employee retention and satisfaction. But 84% say those benefit costs are now a significant cost to their overall expense of running the business. They've got some data in there that says, you know, we're not doing as much hiring now because of these costs. They've had to pull back a little bit on hiring. It's an issue that's really weighing on businesses of all sizes. In fact, there's the number 76% of SBAM members said the cost of providing healthcare in Michigan is affecting their ability to hire more employees. Three out of every four small business owners having to maybe curtail hiring a little bit because of these costs. So those are the rate proposals and the SBAM data gives us a little bit of information on how small businesses are viewing these. Hopefully someday these costs will get under control. But for right now, just more of the same that we've seen for many, many years, which is constantly rising health premiums.
Patrick Center: Keeping with health care, we have a new psychiatric hospital opening in the Grand Rapids area.
Mark Sanchez: Yeah, you know, in the last couple of years we've made an effort here at Crain’s Grand Rapids to pay more attention to behavioral health and the need for more capacity as we've seen incidence rates rise. We've seen people more apt to seek help for a condition, mental health illness, especially the younger generation. So that's brought about a significant need for more capacity. This is a big one coming online. It's the new Southridge Behavioral Hospital over on the Southwest side of town over in Byron Center in Southwest Kent County. And it was developed through a partnership between Trinity Health Grand Rapids and Universal Health Services Inc. over in Pennsylvania. That's a major operator of acute care hospitals and mental health hospitals. It's a 96-bed psychiatric hospital, $46 million and it should open here in early June. They had a kind of ceremonial ribbon cutting for the hospital last week. It's there just off the interchange of the M-6, South Beltline, and it's going to add some significant capacity here in Kent County. And we've seen a buildup of capacity for a few years now. We saw last year, Trinity Health Grand Rapids opened a crisis center at its main hospital campus south of downtown. It's got a stabilization unit. If somebody's got a crisis, an emergency, they can go there and get some immediate care, immediate treatment, and stay up to 72 hours. We've seen other facilities open. We've seen a couple of years ago, a number of years back, Pine Rest opened an urgent care behavioral health unit there on the south side of town. So, this is just another one with the South Ridge Behavioral Hospital. It's just one more added component to that mental health care system here in Western Michigan. And it's going to add a lot of much needed inpatient capacity.
Patrick Center: We're talking with Crain's Grand Rapids business staff writer, Mark Sanchez. Degage is working towards finding more affordable housing and it has a model that it hopes others will follow.
Mark Sanchez: It has a model that as well as has been quite successful in the first year. We wrote about this a couple of months ago. And when this started in early 2024, Degage Ministries working with Trinity Health, they housed this center in the old Hope Lodge there across from the old St. Mary's. Yes, I still call it St. Mary's campus here in Grand Rapids. It's a project with a lot of partners in it, including Trinity, Degage, Catherine's Health Center, Network 180, and the Grand Rapids Chamber Foundation. A few years ago, there were a lot of voices rising about the homeless population rising and the effect, especially in downtown. And here's again, an initiative that has worked. Basically, this one, what Degage has done, it's for women who are chronically homeless who have some mental health issues such as substance abuse. Bring them in, give them a place to live, surround them by a lot of this care, mental health care, medical care, and social workers to help them first overcome their mental illness or addictions and stabilize them. And in the first year, Degage Ministry had a lot of success in the number of folks who weren't going to ERs for a situation. Weren't showing up at urgent care centers. Weren't having encounters with the police. There's one resident that had 66 ER visits in 2023, reduced them by 100% in 2024. And there are significantly fewer EMS calls for these 25 participants. So now Degage Ministries wants to work with Mel Trotter's Ministries and really expand this program called Complex Care Housing for these individuals and add maybe 30 to 50 residents in the first year. Then maybe 15 to 25 in subsequent years, eventually get up to about 120. And it's in the middle of raising some funding to do this. Also looking for some facilities out there in Kent County that could house this initiative and house these individuals. Going to cost about $2 million to $5 million per location. There's a campaign going on and one possible funding source is kind of some support from the state. Legislators here in Kent County, they've requested a $1 million earmark in the next state budget to support the initiative. But again, going back to the basics, it's an initiative that has shown a lot of promise in addressing folks and helping folks who are chronically homeless and have some other issues going on. It's got some data that shows that success. And now, Degagé, working with Mel Trotter, really wants to expand it to serve and help more people.
Patrick Center: Crain's Grand Rapids Business, staff writer Mark Sanchez. Thank you so much.
Mark Sanchez: Thank you, Patrick.