Health care events 2013

[eridani]

24. June update

Currently the three hospitals, Skagit Valley, Island, and Cascade, are reviewing proposals from four healthcare systems. The proposals from PeaceHealth, Providence/Swedish, UW medicine, and Virginia Mason include offers of support and governance and are accompanied by private presentations to the commissioners of the three local hospitals.

As a community, we have educated each other and the commissioners about our values for healthcare access and non-discriminatory care. We have attended forums and meetings and signed petitions. We have made our voices heard and the national media listened. Religious hospitals are coming under question all across Washington State, and Northwest Washington has been at the center. Here is a community that stands up for what it believes in and in protecting healthcare access for all.

Although the presentations to the hospital commissioners by UW Medicine, PeaceHealth, Providence/Swedish, and Virginia Mason are closed to the public, we can still have a voice in the process and we still need your help.

Please write letters: letters to your newspaper and to each of the commissioners. Let them know that you are counting on them to make the decision that best represents you and your desire to preserve healthcare choices, protect patients’ rights and meet patients’ needs. We have provided talking points below and we have published all the contact methods on our website for your convenience.

With a possible decision by mid-summer, the fierce urgency to make your voice heard is now! Thank you for your help.

Talking Points for Letters to Editors and Commissioners

1. Catholic health services are required to adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Bishops. These Directives prohibit : contraception, sterilization procedures, fertility treatments, abortion, even when the mother’s life is at risk, participation in the Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) provisions, and in any other end-of-life Advanced Directives that the bishops deem to violate the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.

2. Religious hospitals are funded by public monies, directly through levies and indirectly through Medicare and Medicaid payments. This public funding of religious institutions is in violation of Washington State Constitution, which says: “No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction, or the support of any religious establishment”.

3. Washington state laws specifically protect every resident’s right to birth control and every woman’s right to abortion. Washington law also says that the terminally ill have the right to exercise the death with dignity choice. Religious hospitals should not be allowed to “trump the law” by making these services unavailable, especially in communities where these hospitals are the only source of care.

4. Patients in Catholic hospitals and clinics are not advised that the hospital limits healthcare choices based on religious doctrine, so patients do not even know that they have options other than what the Catholic hospital offers them.