BARRY NOREEN: Once again, talk turns to selling city's health system

Every few years someone suggests that Colorado Springs should sell Memorial Health System.

The rationale isn't always the same. Sometimes the reason given is that it isn't government's role to manage hospitals. Sometimes it's that the city is cash-strapped. Some don't like it that Memorial has steadily gained market share at the expense of Catholic Church-operated Penrose-St. Francis Health Services.

Councilman Jerry Heimlicher hasn't exactly said he wants to sell Memorial, but he's come pretty close, noting that because of the hospital's rising bills for uncompensated care, it's time for the city to review its options.

A question that looms at least as large as "should we sell the hospitals?" is the one that is never asked. That question is "what do you plan to do with the proceeds?"

Memorial is easily worth more than $500 million. Let's see a show of hands: Should we give City Council members $500 million to play around with?

Heimlicher wants the city attorney's office to render an opinion about how City Hall might be limited in handling proceeds from such a sale.

"Do we give it back to the public?" he asked rhetorically. "Do we put it in the general fund? I'm not proposing selling the hospital. I'm suggesting getting all the facts."

Heimlicher doesn't like it that the hospital system pays its administrator $550,000 a year, or that Memorial agreed to spend $250,000 for the U.S. Senior Open golf tournament. He says those issues are proof the hospital is being mismanaged.

Whatever anyone thinks about those decisions, though, they don't rise to the level of being good reasons to sell the entire enterprise.

Taking the proceeds from the sale of Memorial and dumping them into the general fund for, say, pothole repair, would be a silly way to fritter away a long-term community asset. In a few years, you'd still have potholes every spring, but you wouldn't own a hospital anymore.

It would be like taking out a second mortgage to underwrite a trip to Las Vegas.

For now, council members including Margaret Radford and Scott Hente are opposed to selling Memorial. "Just because the fire ax is in the tool kit doesn't mean you're going to use it," Radford said.

The cost of uncompensated care is growing at hospitals everywhere. It's a concern, not a reason to panic.

"I am saying we go back and study why we bought it in the first place, and find out if this is still something the city should be doing," Heimlicher said.

Occasionally evaluating the mission is a good idea. Making the public think one of its institutions is somehow beyond salvage and should be jettisoned is not such a good idea.

Contact Noreen at 636-0363 or noreen@gazette.com. He appears every other Friday on KOAA's Comcast Channel 9 at 4 p.m.