Sale of Exempla to Sisters of Charity is good business, bad for people.
The northbound train can leave the station and not return with
Fran Miller onboard. Fran Miller's letter to
YourHub was quite a reaction after obviously reading an "irrelevant" newspaper. I wouldn't say though that his argument is poorly reasoned, but would say it surely lacks any note of compassion. Compassion that can be found as the original and lasting underlying principle for hospitals' existence.
As he was fond of noting, their unique ethnic and religious identities have fallen by the wayside due primarily to "big business" practices founded strictly on monetary values "as the need to access capital." As a result, health care suffers. It isn't all about money, it is about caring for the people it is intended for. And comparing hospitals, one in a larger, managed system, and one not, is like comparing apples and oranges, certainly lacking in compassion inferring perhaps that because the one that is not is less capable or caring.
Fran speaks of the capable administrators the Sisters of Charity employs with their capital, management experience. Where is the discussion of the caring and capable administrators? I for one, as many would I believe, rather get care in a facility where you feel cared for instead of being just a number and having to wonder about your health care being compromised because of financial considerations. He says it "is really not about abortions, vasectomies and tubal ligations," but it most certainly is. That is the crux of the issue regarding the sale in the first place.
Despite what he feels about the newspapers' "poorly reasoned" arguments, that fact remains that it is a big concern of many people including the staff, medical professionals, and doctors and nurses at the hospitals. One fact so conveniently left out was that DNR patients wishes would also not be respected. That touches on the lives of all the friends and family members of those patients as well. To be kept alive against their wishes is certainly devoid of compassion for all of those people. Where do DNR patients go when their health suffers? To clinics and doctor's offices or to emergency rooms and ICUs?
Having been a cancer patient and having had care at Good Samaritan, one of hospitals in involved in the questionable, possible sale, having a "do not resucitate" order was on my mind and my family's as it might have to have been used, but it wasn't a concern because it would have been ignored because of someone else's religious beliefs. If that had been a concern for me, there would have been no alternative for me, as my health insurance dictated that facility and had no provision for another. My cancer surgery could not have been performed in a doctor's office or clinic in any circumstances.
I would also venture that Fran Miller, as well as many other opponents to open and complete health care, is probably not concerned with having to avail himself of any of the procedures that the Sisters of "Charity" would ban from the hospitals or perhaps has enough money to go to a clinic or doctor of choice if need be as most people would not. He infers that "the non-observant, secular, progressive minority" who want to make this into a religious issue should be "shunned by the majority" who knows the merger is for the common good. Who is that majority, the non-caring, non-compassionate business people that value money over life?
The majority, by all that I have read and heard, is actually comprised of those folks who believe the exact opposite and value their ethnic and non-secular religious identity and do not want adminstrators imposing their monetary and religious values upon them. Whose common good is this for? It is not for the common good of the people seeking quality health care. This most assuredly is a religious issue, since the Catholic church is the one who would forbid certain care for people who seek it at those hospitals. Sure, the care would be available at other clinics and offices, but who can, by the nature of their finances and insurances providers, avail themselves of that opportunity? Then what are the chances the care needed will be provided?
One answer may rest in the fact that care may be provided elsewhere as an alternative due to the fact that Kaiser Permanente, a manager of a very large health care system who sends many people to Lutheran and Good Samaritan, may not do so as a result of the sale to the Sister of Charity and find alternative sites for more complete, non-restrictive health care. And providing the sale goes through, what then, I wonder, will the opponents of the sale who work at the hospitals feel. Will they be inclined to seek employment elsewhere, if it is available, where they are free to provide the health care no one is excluded from. I can't help but wonder if Fran's "reasoning" isn't a bit poor regarding those possibilities!