… takes you, in miniature, through the moral and financial history of this country. Let us follow it.
The place was founded in 1863 by the Poor Sisters of Saint Francis. This charitable lot opened a soup kitchen during the Great Depression that fed hundreds of people a day. Over the years it’s been sold and sold again, and it’s had lots of financial trouble along the way and presumably compromised somewhat on care … But the story has a happy ending!
Hoboken University Hospital (UD can’t figure out what the “university” is doing in the name, but as long as the word is there, University Diaries will write about it) has recently been sold to investors – featured on the front page of today’s New York Times – who do things like this:
“Their model is to charge exorbitant rates, particularly for emergency room services, and if the insurance companies don’t pay them, they threaten to go after the member for the balance of billing,” said Carl King, head of national networks for Aetna, whose in-network contract was also ended by Bayonne in 2008.
And now their hospitals are doing great! They’re taking struggling non-profits once affiliated with shabby little charitable outfits like those poor sisters and turned them into HUGE profit centers! Look at what’s going on in another of their hospitals – the most expensive hospital in the United States!
Aetna’s internal data showed that Bayonne Medical’s emergency room charges jumped again in 2012 and are running 6 to 12 times as high as those of surrounding hospitals. Last fall, [the chief investor in Bayonne Medical] bought the designer Tory Burch’s oceanside home in Southampton for $11 million, according to public records.
Yes, the story of this hospital’s transformation from a modest charitable endeavor devoted to healing to a cutting-edge collections agency is America’s Story.
May 19th, 2013 at 2:22PM
This story deserves a comment, even if only to compliment you once again on your boundless reserves of _saeva indignatio_. You need a new category, “Only in America” (I hope; probably just “Mostly in America” — this is too good a moneymakinh racket not to be widely imitated).
May 19th, 2013 at 6:59PM
Thank you, Howell.