OUR VIEW: Memorial, the taxpayer's health care liability (with poll)

This column has long advocated the sale of Memorial Health System, including its three hospitals and other assets, because city government should not be in the health care business. Governments function best by focusing on core competencies. City Hall is by far the best entity to pool the money of taxpayers in order to provide them with roads, bridges, running water and sewage infrastructure.

City government isn’t the best entity to provide health care. Traditionally, inhabitants of the United States have enjoyed access to some of the best hospitals in the world, and nearly all have been established and run by private sector for-profit and non profit organizations.

Non profit religious organizations, mostly the Catholic church, provide 18 percent of the country’s hospital beds and 13 percent of the hospitals.

Another 42 percent of the country’s approximate 3,400 hospitals are owned by secular non profits. Only 17 percent of U.S. hospitals are owned by cities, counties, states or the federal government, based on data published by the Wall Street Journal. Colorado Springs is nearly alone in stretching the mission of city government to include health care.

Whenever The Gazette has called for the sale of Memorial, critics have pointed to an unassailable fact: The hospital system, run as a city enterprise, has made money and done nothing to siphon taxpayer revenues.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it here: It’s only a matter of time. In 2008, while Memorial lost $32 million, this column stated: “Because the city owns the hospital, the city is ultimately responsible for keeping it afloat.” The editorial quoted then-Councilman Jerry Heimlicher, who believed the city would soon be asked to subsidize Memorial.

(Please vote in poll to the right. Must vote to see results. Thanks!)

Today, the City Council will meet with Memorial’s Board of Trustees to discuss a possible sale. It’s a recommendation of the council’s own Sustainable Funding Committee. The committee recommends exploring a sale because the city has “legal” and “moral” obligations to subsidize the health care system in the event it becomes a regular money loser. In other words, it poses a potentially huge liability. Most hospitals do. But most are owned by private sector philanthropists or investors, who use money placed at risk voluntarily. If the city props up Memorial, it does so by risking the incomes and properties of the residents City Hall is supposed to protect and serve. Let’s hope City Council finds a way to sell, in a way that may benefit all.

— Wayne Laugesen, editorial page editor, for the editorial board.

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Editorial opinions have no connection with The Gazette’s news division, and do not express the views of all Gazette associates.