“News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising.”
— Katharine Graham, Publisher of The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal
The following was submitted by a Boise business leader:
Monday June 20, Boise resident Bob
Kaiser submitted the following letter to the editorial
board at the Idaho Statesman. The letter challenges the editorial
board's published opinion that all of
the proposed St Luke's expansion's medical office buildings (nearly half of the
project) should be located on their downtown hospital campus, to provide
proximity and convenience. Ironically, this position directly contradicts the
newspaper's own reporting by its health care business reporter, who has won
national and state awards for her reporting on health care and public
affairs.
Here is the rebuttal letter:
Dear Statesman editorial board:
I would like to introduce you to newspaper
reporter Audrey Dutton. Audrey is an award winning Healthcare
reporter for the Idaho Statesman, your very own newspaper. Over the last 4
years, Audrey's in-depth healthcare articles have educated many readers in
Southwestern Idaho about the reasons behind the high cost of healthcare.
In Sunday's editorial regarding St Luke's
expansion, you wrote, "Though some have suggested that the St. Luke’s
plan includes an inordinate number of medical office buildings that could be
located elsewhere in the city, we don’t buy that. To the contrary, we feel the
proximity and convenience in the new plans serve patients trying to get
well."
Yet, in one of Audrey’s articles printed in the
Statesman on October 28, 2012 she summarized, "HOSPITAL-BASED = HIGHER
CHARGES" and in that article she went on to detail why that is the
case. Per your own newspaper's investigative reporting it has been shown
that outpatient visits, procedures, labs, imaging, all cost significantly more
when delivered on a hospital campus.
The question I’d like to ask the editorial board is
this; do you read your own newspaper reporting or just the corporate press
releases and paid advertising?
Bob Kaiser, Boise
The proposed St Luke's expansion
includes nearly 300,000 square feet of medical office buildings, which includes
outpatient services and doctor offices. In many cases, outpatient doctors do
not provide inpatient care, which is typically handled by a hospitalist. All three Medical Office Buildings and associated
parking could be easily built on St Luke's 5.6 acre downtown Boise property on
Fairview Avenue, between 25th and 27th Street, or their Americana property or
their Meridian Campus. A new medical office building complex could provide
outpatient visits, procedures, labs, imaging, and offer affordable off-campus
healthcare with proximity and convenience.
If the proposed St Luke's
expansion were completed, it would have nearly 100,000 square feet more space
in just Medical Office Buildings than the entire square footage of the St
Luke's Meridian Campus.
In an October 30, 2015 IdahoStatesman article, Audrey wrote about a cancer patient's out-of-pocket costs
increasing 490 percent after her doctor joined St. Luke's.
"When a cancer patient wrote an
email to St. Luke’s CEO David Pate saying her costs for blood work spiked
from $40 to $236 after her doctor joined St. Luke’s, she prompted a string
of emails among St. Luke’s employees and leaders.
Her blood work was suddenly billed as occurring in a
hospital, and her insurance plan wouldn’t cover that, leaving her with the full
charge."
Middle-class families are
experiencing rising healthcare costs first-hand through ever increasing
employee contributions, larger deductibles, and co-pays.
Given a choice, most Treasure
Valley residents would choose affordable healthcare that is closer to the
county's population center over the hardship of surprise hospital-based blood
work costs that may increase 490 percent and having to cover the cost
themselves because their health insurance does not.
Keep Boise Connected, Inc. has
never been against better or more convenient health care. What we have opposed
is the taking of our public streets for the primary purpose of generating more
profit for a supposed not-for-profit entity, particularly when there appear
to be obvious and better options for the community. It doesn't help when
the very institutions that are supposed to act as a safeguard on the public's
behalf, namely our government and our local press, have seemingly "sold
out" on their responsibilities.
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