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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCatholic Church Owns 8 Of Largest Health Care Systems. Anti Birth Control.
According to an article in Salon, if you happen to be covered by a system owned by a Catholic institution you are likely not going to be covered for family planning services like birth control. And you are likely to be denied an abortion even if it saves your life. And if you are going to die because you cannot get a needed abortion then you will likely be allowed to die where the Catholic church owns the hospital.
And the Church is actively buying up OB GYN practices the doctors becoming employees of the Catholic Church institutions. In such a practice birth control is also verboten. The only option a woman has with the Church in charge is to become celibate.
Over time it will not matter if birth control is legal or abortion is legal. A health care system owned by religious organizations can make getting any services nearly impossible.
The attack on family planning is wide spread, endemic and even stealthy. Younger women will have no choices in the future unless things change. Women are losing their rights every day in so many little ways.
niyad
(113,582 posts)is not a bad thing are almost astounding.
Response to niyad (Reply #1)
PeaceNikki This message was self-deleted by its author.
niyad
(113,582 posts)cases, that catholic hospital and medical service is the ONLY one available.
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)That really should be the focus. Why are there not enough public hospitals? Why does the Cathilic Church successfully build so many?
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)but buying up existing ones.
The only hospital in Santa Fe NM, where I live, is a Catholic hospital, bought up several years ago by a Catholic hospital consortium.
They have also been buying up most of the various medical practices here.
Many people long for another hospital in this city, but that's not very likely to happen because to build one from scratch would be incredibly expensive, and I bet any other hospital groups that have looked at the possibility, are likely to conclude that this city is too small (about 60,000 people) and Albuquerque is too close (about 45 minutes away) to warrant building here.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)which is an area that is already sorely lacking enough healthcare facilities, considering the vast land area that one hospital provides for.
The Catholic Corp is not building hospitals, at all. Here, it has attempted to buy out the smaller, financially struggling, already-established institutions.
When they got my hospital, there was barely a whimper, but now all who use that facility must abide by the ridiculous supernatural "tenets" and "immorality" guides that its religious owners follow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/us/hospital-mergers-in-northwest-raise-issue-of-abortion-barriers.html?smid=tw-nytimeshealth&seid=auto&_r=2&
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. Politicians seeking to restrict access to abortion, a marked trend this year from North Dakota to Arkansas, tend not to get much traction in this part of the country.
Washington is heavily Democratic, leaning left especially on social issues. A majority of voters even put into law a statutory right to abortion in 1970 the only state ever to do that. The governor, Jay Inslee, a Democrat, is pushing the Legislature even now to pass a law at a special session on Monday requiring health insurers to pay for elective abortions, another first for the state if it makes it to Mr. Inslees desk.
But now a wave of proposed and completed mergers between secular and Roman Catholic hospitals, which are barred by church doctrine from performing procedures that could harm the unborn, is raising the prospect that unelected health care administrators could go where politicians could not.
The merger wave is mirrored around the country, driven by the shifting economic landscape in health care and the looming changes in federal regulation. Previous Catholic takeovers in Kentucky, Illinois and Pennsylvania have made news and drawn scrutiny.
The concentration of mergers here, through happenstance and history Catholic nuns arrived in Washington with the first waves of settlers in the 1850s is particularly pronounced. If all the proposed religious and secular combinations go through, almost half of the hospital beds in the state the highest percentage in the nation, and up from less than a third at the beginning of last year would be controlled by the Catholic health systems, according to Merger Watch, a nonprofit group in New York that tracks hospitals.
MergerWatch ~ Protecting Patient's Rights When Hospitals Merge
http://www.mergerwatch.org/
Sign installers Ean Emery (left) and Brad Gallespy of Sign Post take down the old United General Hospital sign and replace it with a new PeaceHealth United General Medical Center sign on March 28, 2014. On Tuesday, PeaceHealth took ownership of and started operating the hospital in Sedro-Woolley. Mark Stayton / Skagit Valley Herald
http://www.goskagit.com/all_access/peacehealth-united-general-tie-the-knot/article_f4c6eb80-ca2d-5498-b753-51d078d0c2fe.html?mode=image
People for Health Care Freedom: fighting the religious takeover of hospitals posted by eridani
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1082&pid=2074
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Unconscionable.
Ilsa
(61,698 posts)Owned now by Christus Spohn system. Catholic. They don't typically offer birth control after a rape, for example. I'm not sure you can get it even if you ask for it after a rape.
They own the county hospital in Beeville, Corpus Christi, etc. In other words, a woman might have to travel to San Antonio or Houston to get a public hospital not affiliated with Catholic healthcare.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Also, the Pope is Awesome and so don't say anything bad about the RCC!
Orrex
(63,225 posts)el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)It is troubling - while I am a believer, I do think Hospitals should have to play the same rules whether or not they are religiously maintained, or they need to be completely separate from the medical system and cater only to members of that faith.
Bryant
CharlotteVale
(2,717 posts)PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/12/02/248243411/aclu-sues-u-s-bishops-says-catholic-hospital-rules-put-women-at-risk
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/03/25/dont-take-her-to-catholic-hospital/
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/safety-of-women-in-catholic-hospitals-questioned-by-top-bioethicist-94688044-237696791.html
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/dangers-of-a-catholichospitaluntold.html
CharlotteVale
(2,717 posts)PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)I nearly jumped through my fucking screen.
CharlotteVale
(2,717 posts)hospital for any issue that could remotely relate to reproduction. They will find out how "good" Catholic hospitals are.
PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)It's infuriating.
The one link above says that your living will/directives should explicitly request a non-Catholic hospital. I'd never thought of that, but I will now and suggest my loved ones do as well.
CharlotteVale
(2,717 posts)and my health insurance is through a major carrier, yet I'm limited to a small number of hospitals, and one of them is a Catholic one. Really scares me. I can't imagine what it's like to live where one is your only choice.
PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)assholes.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)The RCC has been busy the last few decades, first with with finding a way to restrict abortion until they can get an amendment passed to undo Roe v Wade:
In 1975, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops had developed a plan to turn every diocese into an anti-choice political machine and to use its existing infrastructure to set up an office in every congressional district. The bishops plan included a four-pronged legislative strategy, which continues to guide the anti-choice movement today:
(a) Passage of a constitutional amendment providing protection for the unborn child to the maximum degree possible.
(b) Passage of federal and state laws and adoption of administrative policies that will restrict the practice of abortion as much as possible.
(c) Continual research into and refinement and precise interpretation of Roe and Doe and subsequent court decisions.
(d) Support for legislation that provides alternatives to abortion.
In other words: fight for an amendment to undo Roe, but at the same time work through the courts and legislatures to make it harder for women to access legal abortion. While Roe would remain the law of the land, women would not be able to actually exercise their rights.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-internal-battles-go-public-part-2-0
And they were also behind the Hobby Lobby decision:
The Catholic bishops now sought a broad-based conscience clause that would allow any employer or insurer to refuse to cover contraceptives for any religious or moral objection. This represented a major escalation in the grounds for claiming conscience protections. Traditionally so-called conscience clauses, like the 1973 Church Amendment, protected individuals or health care entities like hospitals only from being compelled to directly perform abortions or sterilizations in violation of their moral or religious beliefs. In 1997, the federal government expanded conscience protections to the payers of abortion-related services when it allowed Medicaid and Medicare managed-care plans to refuse to pay providers for abortion counseling or referral services. Now the bishops were attempting to extend conscience protection to any payer who had a moral objection to contraception. Such a measure would make contraceptive coverage mandates useless, because any employer or insurer could opt out. And it would once again leave womens reproductive health care at the mercy of individual employers and insurers and stigmatize contraceptives, like abortion, as a segregated health service that could be carved out of the continuum of womens health needs.
The bishops failed to get a broader conscience clause in the bill mandating coverage of contraceptives for federal employees, but they did manage to get an exemption for the five religiously affiliated plans in the system. Having set the precedent that religious providers would be treated differently concerning the provision of reproductive health care, even in the matter of noncontroversial services such as contraception, the bishops launched a major new effort to create broad conscience exemptions.
...
There was more at stake that just the bishops authority over services provided by Catholic institutions. Domestic and international social service agencies affiliated with the church, like Catholic Charities USA and Catholic Relief Services, receive hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts each year to provide social services to the poor, run adoption agencies, and manage international development projects. Catholic Charities affiliates received nearly $3 billion in government funding in 2010, accounting for more than 60 percent of their revenue. Religiously affiliated hospitals in the United States, of which 70 percent are Catholic, receive some $40 billion in government funding each year through Medicare and Medicaid and other government programs.
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/14/how_the_catholic_church_masterminded_the_supreme_courts_hobby_lobby_debacle/
Make no mistake, this is a war and we're losing.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)countryjake
(8,554 posts)http://www.propublica.org/article/u.s.-bishops-take-aim-at-sterilization
The Vatican has an absolute prohibition on sterilization for the purposes of birth control. The U.S. Catholic bishops consider the procedure "intrinsically immoral," on par with abortion. Yet for years, Genesys Health System, a Catholic medical center near Flint, Mich., allowed doctors delivering babies there to tie the tubes of new mothers who wanted to ensure they never got pregnant again.
Genesys's policy wasn't hard to fathom: Performing a tubal ligation immediately after childbirth is the long-established standard of care, especially if a woman is having a cesarean section. "She's already cut open her tubes are right there," said Sarah Ward Prager, an associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology and director of family planning at the University of Washington Medical School. Subjecting a new mother to a second surgery carries "unnecessary risk," Prager said. "It is simply unethical to say, 'I'm going to make you come back to a different hospital to have another surgery in six weeks because the bishop says I can't tie your tubes right now."
Then, seemingly out of the blue, Genesys reversed course. Starting November 1, sterilization with the "direct" aim of preventing pregnancy as opposed to for some other medical ("indirect" reason was banned. Patients who had planned to have the procedure after childbirth were left scrambling; their irate doctors were, too.
Genesys won't say why it allowed sterilizations to go on for so long or why it has forbidden them now. In a statement to ProPublica, the hospital acknowledged only that it had "updated its policy on tubal ligations to comply with current Church teaching."
But this much is clear: The Genesys decision is almost certainly a sign of things to come.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/179102/doctors-oklahoma-hospital-were-just-told-they-cant-prescribe-birth-control-anymore
Catholic hospital administrators ordered doctors practicing in a small Oklahoma city to stop prescribing contraceptives for birth control purposes, according to a report by the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise.
The directive would affect all doctors affiliated with Jane Phillips Medical Center, leaving just one OB-GYN who can prescribe birth control in a city with more than 18,500 women.
A spokesperson for St. John Health System, which owns Jane Phillips, says St. John denies giving such an order.
I was told that my physician has been instructed that they can no longer write prescriptions for birth control as birth control. This effects me because I take birth control as birth control. There are other ways to receive birth control, for example headaches, cramps, excessive bleeding but I have none of those symptoms, a local woman, who requested anonymity, told the Examiner-Enterprise.
Doctors were instructed to stop prescribing contraceptive for birth control during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, according to the Examiner-Enterprise. St. John spokesperson Joy McGill would not comment on the alleged meeting.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Enough is enough.
niyad
(113,582 posts)health care (especially women's health care) is a BAD thing.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)Links to relevant articles provided by:
People For Healthcare Freedom
http://www.healthcare-freedom.net/
ACLU suing Skagit hospital district over abortion rights
https://www.aclu.org/news/woman-sues-public-hospital-district-ensure-access-abortion
'A Risk of Harm': Catholic Hospitals' Ban on Tube-Tying
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/a-risk-of-harm-catholic-hospitals-ban-on-tube-tying/383903/
U.S. Bishops Take Aim at Sterilization
http://www.propublica.org/article/u.s.-bishops-take-aim-at-sterilization
Pregnant? Avoid Alcohol, Caffeine, and Catholic Hospitals
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/pregnant-avoid-alcohol-caffeine-and-catholic-hospitals?redirect=blog/religion-belief-reproductive-freedom/pregnant-avoid-alcohol-caffeine-and-catholic-hospitals
Washington State Case Study: A Difficult Miscarriage Made Worse by Hospital's Religious Restrictions on Care
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-freedman/washington-state-case-stu_b_5037035.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Catholic hospital mergers threaten women's health, activists say
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/30/catholic-hospitalsthreateningwomensreproductivehealthactivistssa.html
The Catholic Church is Managing Many Local Hospitals. How Will it Affect Your Health Care?
http://seattlemag.com/article/catholic-church-managing-many-local-hospitals-how-will-it-affect-your-health-care
Catholic Hospitals Grow, and With Them Questions of Care
http://www.propublica.org/article/catholic-hospitals-grow-and-with-them-questions-of-care
http://catholicwatch.org/
http://www.mergerwatch.org/
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)The anti-abortion battle is about contraception. The RCC opposes contraception in all forms and for all people.
Who knows were the world would be today without Martin Luthern and the sinking of the Armada.
http://www.oldimprints.com/pages/books/49975/franco-prussian-war-thomas-nast/harpers-weekly-complete-issue-front-cover-illustration-the-promised-land-as-seen-from-the-dome-of
historylovr
(1,557 posts)That they would go to such lengths to deny women health care is unconscionable. And it seems that there is no way to stop this.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Never mind his church's assault on reproductive choice, gender equality, and LGBTQ acceptance - just pay attention to the awesome PR campaign!
Agony
(2,605 posts)its CEO and top officers 7 figure salaries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/nyregion/12hospitals.html?_r=0
and.. whats up with this from their i990?
4a At any time during the calendar year, did the organization have an interest in, or a signature or other authority over, a
financial account in a foreign country (such as a bank account, securities account, or other financial account)? 4a X
b If "Yes," enter the name of the foreign country- ► Cayman Islands
See instructions for filing requirements for Form TD F 90-22 1, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts.
non-profits are out of control.