Public Hospitals on the Decline

The fact is that with rising costs, public hospitals are often times forced to shut their doors as they can not afford to provide cheap or free health care to the uninsured and under-served. It is unfortunate that health care has essentially become a business. And like any other business in the world, hospitals must have enough revenue to pay its employees.


With little or no income, some public hospitals may cut the number of attending physicians like K-Mart would cut the number of employees when it’s unable to generate adequate funds. The critical difference is that with fewer K-Mart employees, grandma Jenkins may not get greeted near K-Mart’s entrance, but with fewer health care professionals in a public hospital, little Timmy may not get that bone marrow transplant soon enough. Although this may be a far-fetched and rather radical example, the point is that public hospitals are often times unable to provide quality care to the deserving poor and uninsured population- often due to business-related issues.


Clearly, this is a problem. More than two hundred years ago, this nation was founded upon the principle of equality for all. But clearly there is a huge discrepancy between private and public hospitals. With more public hospitals shutting their doors, more poor and uninsured individuals are falling through the cracks and are being neglected the quality health care that they direly need and deserve. This inadequacy is fundamentally plaguing our health care system as the well-resourced private hospital goers are receiving quality health care and the public hospital visitors are forced to bare the brunt of our double-standard health care system.

With little or no income, some public hospitals may cut the number of attending physicians like K-Mart would cut the number of employees when it’s unable to generate adequate funds. The critical difference is that with fewer K-Mart employees, grandma Jenkins may not get greeted near K-Mart’s entrance, but with fewer health care professionals in a public hospital, little Timmy may not get that bone marrow transplant soon enough. Although this may be a far-fetched and rather radical example, the point is that public hospitals are often times unable to provide quality care to the deserving poor and uninsured population- often due to business-related issues.

Clearly, this is a problem. More than two hundred years ago, this nation was founded upon the principle of equality for all. But clearly there is a huge discrepancy between private and public hospitals. With more public hospitals shutting their doors, more poor and uninsured individuals are falling through the cracks and are being neglected the quality health care that they direly need and deserve. This inadequacy is fundamentally plaguing our health care system as the well-resourced private hospital goers are receiving quality health care and the public hospital visitors are forced to bare the brunt of our double-standard health care system.