A PDN headline on Christmas day stated, “Public concerned about hospital partnership.”
And, well, they should be.
Publicly supported hospitals partnering with private religious hospitals is a recipe for disaster, especially when it comes to providing necessary abortions and reproductive care.
Some religious/private hospital partnerships have found ways of getting around the Vatican’s dogmatic influence, but it nevertheless maintains ultimate control in these situations.
All it would take for the partnership to crumble or for the Vatican to potentially enforce its antiquated “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” upon the partnered hospital is a new Pope, new Catholic hospital board members, and/or a more devout Catholic laity in the hospital district.
“Half the mergers or partnerships between Catholic and non-Catholic facilities result in the limitation or discontinuation of reproductive health services and more than 80 percent deny emergency contraception even to women who had been sexually assaulted,” says Barbara Mann Wall.
If you want to know what is likely to happen in a merger of Olympic Medical Center and a Catholic hospital system, just Google “what happens when public hospitals partner with Catholic hospitals.”
It ain’t good.
If you value choice and access to reproductive health care, you’ll just say no to an OMC merger with any Catholic hospital system.
The answer to the problems of U.S. for-profit hospitals is not in mergers with religious organizations.
Numerous countries around the world have excellent taxpayer-financed, public healthcare systems.
It’s time for the U.S. to join them.
Bill Gerdes
Sequim