Last week, hundreds of Netroots Nation attendees took to the streets of Philadelphia in solidarity with the nurses and other staff of Hahnemann University Hospital to protest its closing. The for-profit hospital is in bankruptcy, being closed down by the private ownership group, Philadelphia Academic Health System, which says it's no longer profitable.
Sen. Bernie Sanders was at Hahnemann this week, promising new legislation that would help local governments purchase for-profit hospitals with a new federal fund designated for that purpose. "I will be very soon introducing legislation in the Senate to establish a $20 billion emergency trust fund to help states and local communities purchase hospitals that are in financial distress," Sanders said. "In my view, any time a hospital is put up for sale in America, the local community or the state must have the right to buy it first with emergency financial assistance." He would also bar private equity funds from owning hospitals.
The Pennsylvania Association of School Nurses and Nurse Practitioners (PASNNAP), the union representing many of Hahnemann's nurses, says 2,500 jobs will be lost when it closes. Beyond that, it's going to devastate the mostly low-income population of patients the hospital serves. "It's going to have a very large impact," Shanna Hobson, a nurse at the hospital and a member of PSNNAP, told CNN. "We provide a lot of services, especially for patients that don't have a lot of insurance, and it is going to be very difficult for the other hospitals to absorb all of these patients."
The hospital is a "ghost town," workers told a local NBC station. The 47 patients receiving dialysis at the hospital three times a week are fearful for their future. "Dialysis is life-sustaining, it's not an option; they have to do it," Michele Smith, a clinic manager in the dialysis unit said.
The details of the legislation haven't been released yet, but it could also help save the hospitals in rural and underserved communities in states that didn't take Medicaid expansion and are closing because of lack of funding.