Summa could not squeeze enough profit from its staff
letter to the editor
To the Editor:
The folks who lost their jobs with Summa Hospitals on Jan. 1 weren’t unskilled laborers whose jobs were automated or sent overseas. They were doctors. Doctors. The folks whose education used to be symbolic of the American dream. And while it’s true, not even Summa can take their education away, the ease with which Summa ended their jobs should be a warning to all of us.
The doctors known as SEA weren’t let go for failing their patients. They weren’t let go because they weren’t doing the work or because the quality of their work slipped. They were let go because Summa couldn’t squeeze enough profit from the work. This should raise two red flags for the rest of us: 1) No “labor” is safe from corporate greed, and 2) Basic health care should probably be considered a basic need (like education or police, fire and military protection) and publicly funded rather than profit driven.
Our 6-decade experiment with for-profit medicine should be wrapped up. The results are in. We lag far behind nations who spend half of what we do for better basic health care. We should be embarrassed that so many other countries do this so much better than we do. It’s time we acknowledge that even for capitalists, there are some things more important than profit. There’s actually still plenty of room for competition and profit at the upper end of the health care industry, but meeting the basic medical needs of our citizens should not be a profit-driven enterprise, because as this 60-year experiment has shown us, when profit comes first our health comes... well, not first.
Chris Adams
Wadsworth
The folks who lost their jobs with Summa Hospitals on Jan. 1 weren’t unskilled laborers whose jobs were automated or sent overseas. They were doctors. Doctors. The folks whose education used to be symbolic of the American dream. And while it’s true, not even Summa can take their education away, the ease with which Summa ended their jobs should be a warning to all of us.
The doctors known as SEA weren’t let go for failing their patients. They weren’t let go because they weren’t doing the work or because the quality of their work slipped. They were let go because Summa couldn’t squeeze enough profit from the work. This should raise two red flags for the rest of us: 1) No “labor” is safe from corporate greed, and 2) Basic health care should probably be considered a basic need (like education or police, fire and military protection) and publicly funded rather than profit driven.
Our 6-decade experiment with for-profit medicine should be wrapped up. The results are in. We lag far behind nations who spend half of what we do for better basic health care. We should be embarrassed that so many other countries do this so much better than we do. It’s time we acknowledge that even for capitalists, there are some things more important than profit. There’s actually still plenty of room for competition and profit at the upper end of the health care industry, but meeting the basic medical needs of our citizens should not be a profit-driven enterprise, because as this 60-year experiment has shown us, when profit comes first our health comes... well, not first.
Chris Adams
Wadsworth
