ACLU of Kentucky

This letter to the editor appeared in the October 31st edition of the Courier-Journal

On October 19^th, the Louisville Metro Board of Public Health held a panel discussion about the hospital merger, which gave University of Louisville Hospital, Jewish/St. Mary Hospital System and Catholic Health Care Initiatives a chance to answer the community’s questions.  It is commendable that these three merger partners gave the community a chance to answer questions; however this dialogue needed to start months ago and not after the deal is seemingly done. 

With that being said we did find out a few answers about what health care will be like under after the merger at the University of Louisville Hospital.  The first is that according to University Medical Center president James Taylor, the hospital is “doing just fine”.  In fact, a Business First article from July 2010, reported that the UMC posted a $15.3 million profit in 2009.  After the merger where will those profits go?  Will they go back to the University, for more care, or will those profits go back to CHI’s Denver headquarters?  Without access to the contracts, the public will never know.

We also learned that University of Louisville Hospital would no longer dispense birth control.  The panel said that would not dispense birth control prescriptions that are written at the hospital, but that women would be free to have the prescription filled at the pharmacy of their choice.  What they failed to state is that for most women, the pharmacy of choice would be the one at the University of Louisville Hospital.

At the panel, they stated that employees of the University of Louisville Hospital may lose health insurance coverage of services, such as birth control, sterilizations, and in-vitro fertilization and that new employees of the merged entity will not have those services covered.  There is something very wrong with the fact that this merger would even jeopardize the health care coverage of the employees of a public agency or that new employees working at a public facility will have less access to health care.

The panel also reported that if the Catholic Ethical and Religious Directives change, which has happened twice since 1994 according to CHI, and services that are currently provided by University of Louisville Hospital would no longer be allowed due to those changes, then University could buy out its stake in the merged entity.  They reported that a third party would determine the cost and then the University would have to pay that amount to CHI to undo the merger.  While the merger partners have not said what that amount is, we can expect if CHI pours in over $100 million into University of Louisville Hospital, they will want all of their money back.  As taxpayers, we would end up paying CHI over $100 million to essentially buy back our hospital.

On October the 19^th University of Louisville Hospital, Jewish/St. Mary Hospital System and Catholic Health Care Initiative answered the communities questions and what we found out was that women will lose critical health care services, current employees may lose benefits, future employees will lose benefits, and when the ERDs change again, the tax-payers will end up holding the $100 million bag.