Boulder Foothills Hospital: No more babies.

[politicat]

http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-business/ci_31232021/boulder-medical-center-patients-will-need-have-babies

Background: Boulder has one hospital, Boulder Medical Center (Boulder Community Health Foothills Hospital), and Boulder Community Health owns around 80-90% of the local medical practices, imaging, physical therapy services and specialist services. Louisville has a Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, Lafayette has a Little Sisters of No Mercy for You Catholic Exempla hospital, and Longmont has Longmont United Hospital (which is now owned by BCH).

BMC will no longer do deliveries at all. People having babies can either a) switch doctors and practices to a birthing center (that has a tendency to push so.much.woo) or drive 15 miles to Longmont, or switch doctors and practices and drive 10 miles to Louisville, or 14 miles to Exempla fuck you if you think we care about the mother's life or have any respect for non-binary persons.

They're blaming this on "an aging population." Boulder is a UNIVERSITY town with 40K undergraduates and a 10,000 person grad student population. People start having babies in their very late 20s and 30s. Boulder is extremely expensive, even for Front Range Colorado, but Boulder's birth rate is in line with every other metro in the region.

This isn't about limited demand -- it's about the near-monopoly consolidation BCH has managed to exert on this community. Communities without OB services tend to lose the ability to perform those services in an emergency situation, and tend to have worse outcomes.

This is an example of the damage of provider consolidation, which is a side effect of the insurance industry's meddling in health care. It's not just the rural hospitals that suffer without insurance coverage and guaranteed payment for service, but they're the canary in the coal mine. If it can happen in Boulder -- which is in the top 10% of wealthiest counties in the country, with almost 100% insured -- it can happen anywhere. This is why we need single payer and to nationalize providers.

[Binkie The Clown]

1. In the long term demographics, those who have the most babies, win.

So wealthy people, by not having so many babies, are destined to be overrun by the common folk.

Oh, wait. Don't the common folk already outnumber the wealthy?

[politicat]

2. Yes. Exactly.

Boulder is setting itself up for a demographic crisis, but that's been true for years. Boulder doesn't have a lot of room to grow out -- mountains on one side, cities on three sides -- and does not want to grow up or more dense. It's a small version of San Francisco's problem. But this? This makes it worse. Historically, grad students in many disciplines have stayed in the area after they've gotten their degrees because it's a good place to live. Now? There's less keeping them and it's harder for them to try to stay, so we're losing all of the talent.

I have huge issues with the BCH monopoly -- it's not serving the community. It's much harder for the elderly, disabled and hard of hearing to make appointments, with much longer wait times and shorter patient interactions; they are charging insurance far more than other large provider groups in Denver or Colorado Springs, but not paying for the labor. Who have to commute in, because BCH isn't paying enough for people to live in the area, so a bad storm paralyzes the hospitals. BCH started as a community hospital, with massive subsidies from the city. It got privatized about 30 years ago, but it's only been in the last 5-10 years that they've gone monopolistic.

Just a reminder: blue cities aren't immune from the worst instincts of late-stage vulture capitalism.

[elleng]

3. Just a reminder: blue cities aren't immune from the worst instincts of late-stage vulture capitalism

Thanks for the reminder. It really is necessary.