Union County Hospital, where I work, was bought by Quorum in about 2019. The plan was specifically to do this: strip it of it's assets, then shut it down and leave farthest Southern Illinois without a hospital that would accept Illinois Medicaid.
Then COVID happened, and the federal and state government pumped a lot of money into Critical Access Hospitals, but with the stipulation that they could NOT shut down. Quorum was stuck trying to actually run their little asset-factory hospitals like hospitals!
After a couple of years of that (Spoiler alert: Quorum is not actually in the healthcare business, and was horrified to find itself obligated to provide healthcare services to the small communities where it's Golden Geese were located) it literally GAVE AWAY the small hospitals it had acquired in the Midsouth area: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Every month they had to provide actual healthcare to actual patients cost them money.
Now we're owned by another conglomerate, nominally in the business of healthcare, but mostly in the business of making money by streamlining services, overordering billable testing, and using algorithmically derived treatment models that treat patients like inconvenient ATMs.
Our greatest asset once was that we're your neighbors in the community. We see our patients everyday at the grocery store, at school events, in church. We care about you: you're our neighbor, our family, our friend. We're still here, still your neighbor, but now we feel a profound sense of moral crisis. None of us went into our careers to provide profit-driven care that would strip our community of it's wealth for the benefit of our faceless Corporate Overlords. at the expense of our friends and families.
‘Commodification of basic human needs’- this phrase gets at the heart of so many problematic issues in America, where we see profit as the driver of so many decisions. It has always struck me that the Constitutional phrase ‘the pursuit of happiness’ can lead to all kinds of trouble. When ‘happiness’ is equated with wealth, money or power, the green light is on for individual or corporate greed. Instead of enshrining the values of community and common interests, America has made the individual pursuit of happiness its highest goal. This we have a country run by billionaires, whose pursuit of happiness outweighs the common good.
Other countries have found ways towards a more moderate system - balancing life and liberty of individual rights with the rights of the community. Thinking of Canada, and many European countries that have free medical care as ‘a basic human right’, which Bernie Sanders repeats over and over again to huge crowds.
Union County Hospital, where I work, was bought by Quorum in about 2019. The plan was specifically to do this: strip it of it's assets, then shut it down and leave farthest Southern Illinois without a hospital that would accept Illinois Medicaid.
Then COVID happened, and the federal and state government pumped a lot of money into Critical Access Hospitals, but with the stipulation that they could NOT shut down. Quorum was stuck trying to actually run their little asset-factory hospitals like hospitals!
After a couple of years of that (Spoiler alert: Quorum is not actually in the healthcare business, and was horrified to find itself obligated to provide healthcare services to the small communities where it's Golden Geese were located) it literally GAVE AWAY the small hospitals it had acquired in the Midsouth area: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Every month they had to provide actual healthcare to actual patients cost them money.
Now we're owned by another conglomerate, nominally in the business of healthcare, but mostly in the business of making money by streamlining services, overordering billable testing, and using algorithmically derived treatment models that treat patients like inconvenient ATMs.
Our greatest asset once was that we're your neighbors in the community. We see our patients everyday at the grocery store, at school events, in church. We care about you: you're our neighbor, our family, our friend. We're still here, still your neighbor, but now we feel a profound sense of moral crisis. None of us went into our careers to provide profit-driven care that would strip our community of it's wealth for the benefit of our faceless Corporate Overlords. at the expense of our friends and families.
Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this. I’d like to share it with the hospital board. I can redact your name if you prefer
Yes, please. I need to keep this soul-sucking job a little longer, until I can retire.
‘Commodification of basic human needs’- this phrase gets at the heart of so many problematic issues in America, where we see profit as the driver of so many decisions. It has always struck me that the Constitutional phrase ‘the pursuit of happiness’ can lead to all kinds of trouble. When ‘happiness’ is equated with wealth, money or power, the green light is on for individual or corporate greed. Instead of enshrining the values of community and common interests, America has made the individual pursuit of happiness its highest goal. This we have a country run by billionaires, whose pursuit of happiness outweighs the common good.
Other countries have found ways towards a more moderate system - balancing life and liberty of individual rights with the rights of the community. Thinking of Canada, and many European countries that have free medical care as ‘a basic human right’, which Bernie Sanders repeats over and over again to huge crowds.
Private equity is also destroying hospice in our country. They are accountable to know one !
This sounds like the series of events that lead to the closure of Joann's. Corporate greed.