The solution for Catholic hospitals is clear: stop taking money from evil.
Importantly, some physicians have for years now learned a great secret: if you refuse Medicare, Medicaid, and Insurance payments, your costs are so reduced that you can make more money while charging only half of what you did before. 50% off for patients, and more profits.
It is false to believe that accepting federal money is the only way to help the poor. Only now does it become obvious that to take the easy route means death.
And by refusing federal money, Catholic hospitals are also freed from the clutches of evil in other ways. For example, patients who use Catholic hospitals will no longer have their medical records kept by the government.
The cross can be openly displayed without offending Muslims. And if some Muslim sees a cross and is offended, he can be told to bugger off.
Nurses and Doctors can pray for the health and recovery of their patients, and priests and nuns can offer solace to the sick without having to be “non-denominational”.
Christmas and Easter can be celebrated in the hospital again.
What has been lost by taking federal money?
Are there any Islamic Hospitals in the USA? If so, do they committ abortions?
I understand everyone’s sentiments here, but do not act like there is an easy answer, for the providers.
This is bankruptcy of health care service providers, or damnation of their souls.
Those are the choices, if this stands.
Each poster calling for the Catholic hospitals to divorce themselves from federal dollars is reacting with the first seemingly obvious and logical option. However, the creeping influence of government dollars has attained a breadth that is so great that it is extremely difficult to operate at all. This is the case with public schools that have been roped into programs over decades that now leave them irreversibly dependent on those government program dollars to operate. Universities are in the same situation as research and student loan programs are essential to keeping student populations at a sustaining level.
Hospitals face even more regulatory pressures than universities and with the increased taxation of wage earners, there will be fewer non-government dollars available to sustain operations. Let’s not forget that donations from high wage citizens help institutions and those dollars are going to be taken by the government. Also, any hospital independent of government dollars will be serving a shrinking population of people with the after-tax dollars to pay the fees.
The only institutions that can operate independent of government dollars are generally very small and often poor. Large Catholic hospitals that are financially healthy will be few if they stop taking government money.