Planned Parenthood Complains about Religious Hospital Mergers

If the Catholic hospital closed, it would reopen the next day under new management (quite possibly government management), since most of the money it survives on is government money.

So what happens if the hospital closes and the diocese sells the property to someone else?

This is just a ploy to get transfer agreements for hospitals to treat botched abortions.

Lots of hospitals (secular and hopefuly all religious hospitals) refuse to participate in abortion and picking up the pieces from botched abortions and infections, etc caused by Main Street but still BACK ALLEY circuit rider abortionists.

Someone else would run it, relying primarily on revenue from federal and state tax dollars, just as the Catholic management is currently doing.

The point is that the Church is using public money to impose its religious practices on taxpayers who don't share the Church's beliefs. That's just not acceptable. An acceptable alternative would be for the Church to own and operate some hospitals according to their beliefs, using only private funds, but that's not a realistic option given the Church's financial condition. In the U.S., the Catholic Church has forked over more than a billion dollars in settlements and court awards (and plenty more is in sight) for its role in aiding and abetting pedophile priests to continue committing their crimes. They could have bought and endowed a few hospitals with that money.

The point is that the Church is using public money to impose its religious practices on taxpayers who don't share the Church's beliefs. That's just not acceptable.

They impose their beliefs by forcing taxpayers to use their institutions?

Every medical provider must provide every imaginable medical service?

From a different angle, they (and the Baptists) provide a limited range of medical services. The government knows that range is limited and has agreed to pay for the benficiaries of public medical programs like Medicare. Those individuals remain free to choose (or not) to use religious institutions. The Church isn't operating in a vacuum and doesn't control the payment system.

The government doesn't care whether or not the provider offers every medical service imaginable. The government holds the purse strings, they control the action. If it actually mattered to the government, they would not pay hospitals or individual medical providers that failed to provide a politically correct range of services.

I would have to disagree. Overall, I have certainly received the impression that more and more young people are pro-life and are willing to take a stand for their beliefs. I began to suspect this when the homecoming queen (and captain of the cheerleading squad) at the local public high school gave a speech on why premarital sex and abortion are wrong. The high school newspaper editor of the largest public school in the city had an ongoing debate column in the newspaper about abortion; she had started out as pro-abort but after dialogue via letters to the editor and reponses, she became pro-life, and admitted so in the paper.
It's kids like this who are our future leaders-and they are ready and eager to stand up for what they believe. For every nutjob bisexual transgendered pro-abort whatever-the-politically-correct-term-is-this-week nut out there, there is a kid who is ready to stand up and say "This is wrong." The people who fought for so-called "abortion rights" are dying off; some will replace them, but many more will come to our side. It is happening already; even the PP folks admit it (see the recent documentary in which a clinic worker wryly admitted that they were losing). Given 30-50 years, I would have to think that we have a fighting chance of making abortion illegal-or at least extremely rare. The numbers are dropping as I type and they will continue to drop.
As far as administration of antibiotics, I will bow to your greater experience (and that of your doctor).

Have a look at some studies. By high school, over 2/3 of teens have been sexually active.

And look around you for evidence of the lack of respect for life in American culture. Look at the top grossing movies. The top selling video games. The top television programs. Look at the number of adolescents on mind numbing, usually prescribed drugs.

As for your comments on transgender issues, I suggest you read a bit more. Transgendered individuals are not "nutjobs". Nor are they responsible for abortion.

I believe abortion is wrong, but I don't think it should be illegal. If illegality changed behavior, there would not be a single drug addict in the US.

They impose their beliefs by forcing taxpayers to use their institutions?

Socialism is an insidious thing, and you need to keep your eyes on the details. In many (perhaps most) states, the state government controls how many hospitals are allowed to exist. Hospitals need a state license to operate legally, and some states have elaborate schemes to limit the number of hospitals and hospital beds in a given area. The deciding factors are all about expense to the state, since the state funds a huge percentage of medical care, and not about what the taxpaying patients want.

This policy has been used against completely private medical practices which want to open small outpatient surgery centers to provide a narrow range of procedures in the doctors' area of expertise. If the procedures they proposed to do required a hospital license, the state can (and sometimes does) just say no. So the answer is that taxpayers often ARE forced to use whatever hospital the state has allowed to operate in their area, or undertake severe inconvenience and/or extra expense (i.e. using a hospital that is 100 miles away and inaccessible by public transportation, making it difficult or impossible for relatives to visit.

Every medical provider must provide every imaginable medical service?

Obviously I'm not suggesting that small hospitals with limited specialized staff, be required to do stuff like heart transplants. However, there is no hospital that has any ob-gyn department, where doctors aren't qualified to do early abortions and tie tubes. Another problem is that these hospitals often don't advertise their religious affiliation or notify patients in advance of basic procedures that the hospital will refuse to perform.

An example is the story told to me by an electrician who was doing some work on my house (entirely on weekends, since he needed the overtime to make ends meet). He and his wife married young, and figured on having 2-3 children. The first two were boys, so when the wife was asked at the hospital after the birth of the second one, whether she wanted her tubes ties, she said no because she and her husband had decided to have one more, as they hoped for a girl. About two years later, she went to the same hospital to deliver baby #3 (a girl), and planned to have her tubes ties while there. So after she arrived at the hospital, already in labor, she told the doctor or nurse that this time she did want her tubes ties. Surprise! "We won't do it, because the hospital was bought by a Catholic hospital operator last year." No change in the name of the hospital, no warning to patients. As a young family strapped for cash, they couldn't come up with the cash right away to have either of themselves sterilized somewhere else (much more expensive to tie tubes in a separate hospital stay, than in connection with a delivery). They resolved to save up and he would have a vasectomy. Unfortunately, she got pregnant again in the meantime, and they weren't comfortable with abortion. So now this young couple has an additional child they didn't want, and daddy is wokring long hours and spending little time with the kids, in order to make ends meet.

Sorry, but it is NOT okay for religious hospitals to be pulling that kind of stunt while operating primarily on public funding.

However, there is no hospital that has any ob-gyn department, where doctors aren't qualified to do early abortions and tie tubes.

I live in a relatively small community now down to one hospital. It's completely secular. No religious affiliation. They don't do any abortions. What does one make of that? It ain't religion yet they are theoretically "forcing" something or other on the powerless taxpayers. But what?

It's about an hour and a half's drive to the big, big city. You want it enough, you go get it.

Sorry, but it is NOT okay for religious hospitals to be pulling that kind of stunt while operating primarily on public funding.

You're letting the young couple off the hook for their own responsibility.

It wasn't a secret that the hospital changed hands and policy was going to change. Think there was a big stink about that in the news? Of course there was, there always is. Admittedly, a busy young couple might not pay attention to the news. But it was no secret. And it was 'their' hospital.

They knew they wanted tubal ligation. During the course of their pre-natal care this topic had to be raised with their doctor. They were experienced in the ways of doctors, hospitals and pregnancies by that point in time. They weren't innocent babes in the woods going through everything for the very first time.

They 'unfortunately' happened to become pregnant? Well, dang. I'm pretty sure the hospital changing policies and government social policy was not a consideration in that event.

My only point being, in addition to institutions, 'we the people' are part of the equation of responsibility. We can't just say 'they' did it to us. That's the victim mentality. If somebody really, really wants "reproductive health care services" they can get them. Maybe not as conveniently as they would like, but they can get them.

Jumping back to your original thought about the Church's financial disaster, part of the problem was the laity shirking their duty to be vigilant. Decades of trusting every priest to be a saint, when the honest ones tell you all the time they are sinners like everyone else, turned into an absolute moral and financial catastrophe. The priests and bishops were primarily responsible but the laity also had a part to play.

The responsibility thing holds true for the medical consumer as well as the Church layman. All that sexual activity entails tremendous personal responsibility.

The solution, of course, is to eliminate socialism, and make all medical care private. The first thing to happen after that, would be the disappearance of the vast majority of "full-service" hospitals. These animals are dinosaurs and 99% of the patients in one at any given time don't need to be in such a facility, and would get better care and better safety from infection, in a small specialized facility devoted to whatever type of medical care they happen to need at the time.

Frankly, I think the only reason hospitals as we know them still exist, is the socialism driven, blatantly unconstitutional system of medical residencies. Medical residents are providing the vast majority of below-market care of patients who require one or more night's stay in some kind of medical facility. Start tinkering with the existing system, which is inextricably intertwined with the phenomenon of large multi-department hospitals, and the whole residency scam will quickly disintegrate. That possibility terrifies the socialists.