Hospitals

Why FRIST Aid?
A Massachusetts chain of Roman Catholic hospitals, which had been operated poorly by the Roman Catholic Church, has been sold off by the Church to pay off some of its debts. Those debts are in part due to litigation awards to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Yes, Catholic Church, bad hospitals, sold off to pay for the sexual proclivities of priests.

The hospitals have been sold to a private equity firm from New York City. Yes, they plan to turn these hospitals into profit-making machines. They are speculating on loopholes and fat reimbursement potential in the recent health care reform bill passed by Congress and hated by Libertarians, like the Tea Party folks. The for-profit hospital industry was very active in trying to subvert true health care reform. And, in many ways, they succeeded by destroying the possibility of a one-payer, national health insurance.

There is no better example of the dysfunction of free markets when it comes to health care. By focusing on health care as business, for-profit hospitals routinely cut wages and cut corners. For-profit hospitals make their profits by exploiting every possible revenue source in the medical payment system. Their focus is not on excellence of patient care. Their focus is on profit. And, taking care of sick and dying people, most of whom are old and have few resources, ethically and thoroughly is simply not a profitable occupation. Ask any small-town physician or public health nurse.

Twenty years ago, I was employed as a psychiatric nurse to review cases for a national health insurance company. My job was to find and end abusive practices by clinicians, who were milking the insurance company unfairly by keeping patients in hospitals for no clinically valid reason or by offering questionable services for which they billed fraudulently. At any given time, I reviewed three hundred cases a week from one end of the U.S. to the other by telephone. In one year, I learned a great deal about how capitalism corrupts and undermines the professional ethics in health care. The evil in these for-profit systems is profound.

Since then, the for-profit health care model has grown to profit from the negligence of government in maintaining quality-control in Medicare and Medicaid systems. The for-profit health care industry has paid lobbyists and politicians millions to undercut any reform. They have succeeded. Hospital Corporation of America, founded by a family whose members have been active in Southern politics, has been the spearhead of their movement to control health care in America.

Now we see one pathetically failed social institution, the Roman Catholic Church, desperately needing to reap profit by selling vital community services, hospitals, to businessmen who plan to use them to glean public funds for profit while delivering profit-minded health care, or substandard-but-costly health care, in my opinion. Here is an example of free market capitalism's true impact on the overall quality of human life.

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