20 December—Corollary to yesterday’s perspective on Prospect Medical Holdings and the sad decline—make that the virtual disappearance—of medical practice as it should be, here are three little pieces relevantly ripped from the editorial-page morgue of the Republican-American:

1. 14 December 2015

Is anybody really surprised that for-big-profit Prospect Medical Holdings wants the same local and state tax abatements after buying Waterbury Hospital’s holding company that it has demanded after buying Eastern Connecticut Health Network?

Does anybody really believe Prospect’s assurances, promises, commitments, and other sweet-sounding self-serving sales talk?

Get real! Once Prospect Medical Holdings has secured property- and sales-tax abatements for a strategically unspecified transition period that it claims are critical to the overall success of the transactions, it’s more than likely to extort even more abatements—and who knows what else—lest it “be forced to” (as it would insist) curtail services, fire non-executive personnel, raise prices, or close its facilities.

For-profit or not-for-profit, give an inch and they’ll take a mile . . .

QED—Ed.

2. 23 June 2017

Does anyone really believe that newly for-profit Waterbury Hospital is laying off yet another batch of employees because of the state’s budget problems? Isn’t it more likely that the new owner, Prospect Medical Holdings, is simply looking to maximize its profit at the expense of the community?

QED—Ed.

3. 4 January 2018

Following up on Dr. Edward Volpintesta’s argument for a single-payer, government-run health-care system, it must be noted that no government can do anything more efficiently nor cost-effectively than private enterprise. Not necessarily better nor fairer, nor more efficiently nor cost-effectively. That, after all, is what capitalism is all about. Profit pure and simple.

And it must be emphasized that health-care is big, big business in all its aspects, even the so-called nonprofit side. That, again, is what capitalism is all about. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the profit motive, a.k.a. greed: among other things, it’s a more effective motivator than virtually anything else.

And that’s why, like it or not, patients all too often have been effectively relegated to customer status—to mere paying customers—by health-care service providers and facilities. (Manufacturers of drugs and equipment never had patients anyway.) And it’s not necessarily the providers’ fault. And facilities—e.g., hospitals—are essentially hotels with bedpans. You get what you pay for. Isn’t that what capitalism is all about?

So obviously a single-payer, government-run health-care system is the solution. Right? Yeah, right. As President Ronald Reagan reminded us, government is the problem, not the solution. And half-century-old Medicare and Medicaid and the still-painfully-teething un-Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) prove the point: all three are well-intentioned but poorly-conceived, half-baked schemes that promise far more than they can deliver. So what else is new?

What’s really needed is a sea-change in human nature. But that’s never going to happen.

In the meantime, contrary to what Dr. Volpintesta asserts most people think or feel, health care is not a right; nor is good health. But it is nevertheless the responsibility of the humane government of a civilized society to provide and/or guarantee access to competent, timely health-care at reasonable (i.e., affordable) cost to all who need it. No two ways about it . . .

Yours faithfully,
Paul Mordecai Rosenberg