US Hospitals Are Hanging by a Thread
Cutbacks and closures mean more Americans are living in health-care deserts. Providing government support could mean easier access to better care.
Community members applaud staff who stuck it out in the months before Steward's Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, Massachusetts, was taken over by Lawrence General Hospital.
Photographer: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
As Steward Health Care Systems LLC’s network of hospitals was struggling, it stopped paying some of its vendors. One of those vendors was a supplier of bereavement boxes, the tiny cases used to transport the remains of newborns who don’t survive. The vendor eventually stopped supplying the cases, which meant that grieving parents had to receive their children’s remains in cardboard shipping boxes.
That story, told by a nurse at a congressional hearing looking into Steward’s bankruptcy, has stuck with me as a heartbreaking example of just how severely some of America’s hospitals are struggling — even as the US health care system absorbs shocking sums of money from patients and taxpayers.