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Readers may notice digital ads on local news websites—including IBJ and The Indianapolis Star—thanking Gov. Mike Braun for “fully funding health care in Marion County.”
The ads note in small print that they were paid for by the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County. Health and Hospital Corp. operates the Marion County Public Health Department, Eskenazi Health and the Eskenazi Health Centers, Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services and long-term care centers.
The ad campaign, which the organization spent $500,000 on, recognizes Braun for maintaining $38 million in the proposed state budget for health care “for the indigent in Marion County,” spokesman Curt Brantingham told IBJ.
The funding is included in House Bill 1001, the biennial budget bill, which the Indiana House approved and is now being considered by the Senate. Braun had included the funding in budget recommendations he made to lawmakers earlier this year.
When asked, Brantingham did not say with which outlets the organization placed the ads. At the time of publication, he had not responded to follow-up questions specifically asking whether Health and Hospital Corp. paid outlets other than IndyStar and IBJ.
When readers click on the ad, they’re directed to a landing page that includes a video touting Marion County’s “level-one trauma center” and “state-of-the-art burn unit,” both at Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital, which a narrator says “don’t exist without help.”
“Gov. Mike Braun’s support for dependable, quality health care has made it all possible,” the narrator says.
Braun’s term began in January. Health and Hospital Corp. has been funded at the same level in the state’s biennial budget since 2009, when former Gov. Mitch Daniels was in office.
Health and Hospital Corp. presented a 2025 budget of $2.7 billion before the Indianapolis City-County Council last fall.
That budget includes funding from multiple sources. The organization uses the money it receives from the state budget to support operating expenses. It is also partially funded through property and local option income taxes, charges for services, grants, and Medicaid funds.
Health and Hospital Corp. is governed by a seven-member board of trustees. The mayor of Indianapolis, the City-County Council and the county commissioners appoint the members.
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So Health and Hospital Corp is receiving the same funding from the state that they have received for the last 16years. But now they feel compelled to spend $500,000 trying to convince us that this is some great gift from Governor Braun? What am I missing here? Can anyone fill in the gap on WHY they are spending >1.3% of their state funding to promote the Governor?
There was probably a negotiation behind closed doors that started with threats to defund Health and Hospital & ended with an agreement to promote Braun.
I agree. Braun is a wannabe Trump. So if you stroke his fragile ego you just might get something you want from him.
Or like most liberal organizations, they are not good at spending their money where it should be spent
Healthcare is now a liberal concept?
There’s dumb takes, and then there’s whatever this is.
Or, unlike most conservative organizations they don’t think giving trillion dollar tax breaks and billion-dollar government contracts to multi-billionaire oligarchs or funding obsolete-on -delivery weapons systems are where money “should be spent.”
Health & Hospital Corp. is a “liberal organization?” That’s a new one.
Passing strange, to use tax dollars to thank a governor.
That $500,000 is money well spent if it keeps the state from looking too closely at the regulations that allows HHC and all of the other county hospitals, to siphon off millions from all of the nursing homes they own.
These were such bizarre ads to come across in the wild. Would love reporting on actually why and how this came about. It feels so unnatural to publicly thank a Governor in this way. IBJ have any actual reporting to contribute?