Terminal diagnosis for community hospitals?

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In our December 1985 issue, I urged readers to become active in the struggle to reduce environmental carcinogens. Recent regulations show that it is possible According to the Dec. 3 New York Times, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration is going to propose stricter limits for exposure to benzene, The new formaldehyde standards resulted from a court order to OSHA to establish a standard or have the federal court set one. This was a direct result of a suit brought by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and 13 other Similarly, the benzene standards result from a suit brought by the United Steel Workers (USWA), which had not yet come to trial. The limit for benzene exposure in the workplace will be reduced from 10 parts benzene per million parts air to one part per million.

I'd like to thank readers who have expressed interest in "Hazardous to Your Health." Keep the letters coming with your comments and suggestions for future the bills naturally increased. Hospital admissions, medical testing, etc.—all increased, because it was CHICAGO—The community hospital is a dying lucrative for the medical business, and the government institution. Changes in the economy and in government policy have made the free-standing voluntary hospital an Many previously uninsured persons benefitted from endangered species. It will soon be an extinct one. the programs, but so did the new medical corporations.

Until the 1960s, health care in the United States was largely a personal matter. There was no national medical insurance or socialized medicine such as existed in other But there were also two new developments: the industrialized nations since the turn of the century. investor-owned hospital and the hospital system, The middle class bought insurance after the creation whether profit or non-profit. A recent study by Bradford of Blue Cross in 1929, and the strongest unions won H. Gray of the National Academy of Sciences indicated health insurance in union contracts in the 1940s. But that "the 755 hospitals owned by investor-owned chains in 1982 constituted about 11 percent of all hospitals in When Congress passed Medicaid and Medicare in the United States. Adding the 282 hospitals the chains 1965, millions of previously uninsured individuals managed, they controlled about 15 percent of the entered the market for medicine. The total amount of public and private spending for health care rose from When Ronald Reagan took office as president, he was less than $50 billion in 1964 to almost $400 billion by committed to cutting back all of the liberal social 1984, from about 1 percent of the GNP to 10 percent. programs, but after 20 years Medicare and Medicaid had Today health care is the third largest area of become too popular and too institutionalized to be be The billions of dollars in taxpayers' money went to So Reagan began a number of cost-cutting measures, private professionals like doctors, whose salaries rose to the most important being to institute a system of an annual average of over $100,000, and increasingly to payment based upon estimated average costs for specific procedures. The government would no longer simply At the same time, profits in manufacturing were declining, so investors were attracted to the profitable As a result, hospital admissions fell from 36.3 million in 1983 to 35 million in 1984, while average Since the government insurance simply paid the bill, hospital stays declined from 9.6 days to 7.4 days, and the total number of hospital beds fell by 11,000 from a This article originally appeared in the Nov. 7, 1985, While the government's medical bill was reduced, it issue of the Free Press, a community newspaper meant that the not-for-profit free-standing voluntary published in Chicago. It has been abridged and edited for hospital was in many cases no longer viable. There This month's "Hazardous To Your Dan La Botz as a guest columnist.

to achieve success.

formaldehyde, and cotton dust.

unions. articles.—STEVE ZIPPIN most people had no medical insurance. employment in the Chicago area.

private health corporations.

and expanding health care industry. Socialist Action. Health" features hospitals." BOTTOM'S THE OPERATION IS was picking up the tab.

Investing in health done away with.

pay the bill the hospital presented.

total of 992,616 in 1983. be destroyed by it.

themselves.

care system in the Chicago area.

counties, and a factory in Florida. Health Systems.

Hospital.

sympathetic?

is divided among the big three.

equivalent of GM and Toyota.

conglomerates.- DAN LABOTZ Medical empires

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A SUCCESS, MR. KEPPLE. sillee.