Stories from the CHART Town Hall

To add to what Mark said in the previous post about the CHART town hall last Wednesday: some anecdotes.

1. Besides pointing out the gap between the UCMC's charity care and the tax breaks it gets for it (again, that's $48 million), Heather O'Donnell also stated that nobody is currently holding private hospitals responsible for charity care. (That means it's up to us.)

2. According to an ER physician: it is a long-standing myth that the cost of non-emergency care in the ER is great. Setting up and running an ER is very expensive, but the incremental cost of non-emergency care is not that high.

3. A UofC emeritus professor needed to see a cardiologist. He went to the UCMC, found a cardiologist, but was told he would have to wait 3 months for an appointment. But, as it turns out, the UCMC had opened up a branch on the Gold Coast--and the very same cardiologist was working over there. So he went to that clinic on the Gold Coast. No 3 month wait. When he showed up they parked his car for free, the receptionist offered him coffee, it only took him 5 minutes before the nurse came to meet him, and then, after that, just another 5 minutes for the doctor to see him--for a 40 minute visit.

4. One dude had gone to Mitchell Hospital shortly before the town hall meeting. He asked 5 nurses, in passing, if they knew about the event. 4 out of the 5 told him they wouldn't dare to talk about the rally where someone else might hear. Although I didn't write them all down, there were plenty of other stories like this last one, about threats, punishments, and just plain petty forms of manipulation, used by management to get nurses and other workers to mind their own business.

And one last thing I noticed: these issues are bigger than the UCMC itself, and all of them are connected to the brokenness of the health care system in the region and in the nation as a whole--and, sure enough, calls for single payer health care turned out to be big applause lines.

UCMC: Where did all the money go?

Over 150 students, workers, medical professionals, patients, activists, and local residents came out last week to an open town hall meeting organized by the Coalition for Healthcare Access Responsibility and Transparency (CHART), of which SSN is a member. The lively discussion included the revelation that although the UofC Medical Center receives around $58 million every year in tax breaks, it only spends $10 million on the charity care that is supposed to justify them. As Heather O'Donnell (Policy Director, Center for Tax and Budget Accountability) remarked, the UCMC's standard response - that it needs the extra money to cover its losses on Medicaid patients - is simply an attempt to muddy the water. Although it is true that hospitals take a hit on Medicaid patients, Illinois law clearly states that tax breaks are specifically intended to cover charity care only. All healthcare providers suffer from the broken Medicaid system whether they get tax breaks or not, so the UCMC cannot use Medicaid losses as an excuse for failing in its charity care obligations. To read the full CTBA report, click here.

U of C closes 47th St clinic

See the Trib article here.

Whatever the university says, it's hard not to see this as part of a long-term trend to diminish health care and education services for those on the south side who need them most. SSN will be working with CHART (Coalition for Healthcare Access, Responsibility, and Transparency) on a response to the closure. Watch this space.