The menace of America’s for-profit health care industry is alive and well in our community, as last week over 400 health care workers of Springfield’s McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center went on a two-day strike. Their ire speaks to the need for a complete restructuring of our local institutions along with the national industry in favor of a public option for health care.
Many of the strikers are members of SEIU Local 49, protesting what they say are inadequate working conditions and proposed plans to outsource over 100 positions within the hospital.
In a press release, the union called the plans outrageous: “Outsourcing those jobs to outside contractors takes good jobs out of our community, and it is grossly unfair to the dedicated hospital workers who have put their lives on the line.”
It must be understood that McKenzie-Willamette is but a local manifestation of the mammoth avarice of America’s industrial health care. Conditions that are emblematic of the systemic greed of the sector, whose oath to do no harm seems to refer to the corporate bottom line, not to the patients in the company’s care.
Nationally, a third of the working class are in medical debt, paying $5,000 on average annually, as reported by CNBC. McKenzie-Willamette contributes to these statistics. Running as an overtly for-profit institution, it has managed a 26% profit margin.
The Springfield hospital has received $4.5 million in COVID-19 relief funds, while McKenzie-Willamette’s parent company, Tennessee-based Lifepoint Health, has raked in $1.2 billion in operating profits. By all accounts, this is an immensely profitable industry, yet it is never enough.
The proposal to outsource positions within McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center is a clear attempt to further increase profits. This change will hurt the Springfield-Eugene community by putting many out of a paycheck and setting a bad precedent for labor rights. Further, this deal only came to light through the power of collective organizing, proving the necessity of unions to keep overzealous corporate interests in check.
“And we don’t think it’s right – taking the hardworking people, especially during this pandemic,” said a striker in an interview with KEZI.
SEIU Local 49 will sit down with hospital directors to negotiate a new contract. If the union succeeds in its demands, it will be a great win for Eugene health care workers. But it will not fix the systemic issues of the industry.
Let it be clear to all members of the community: as long as for-profit health care exists, your loved ones will be burdened with debt and worry, forced to choose between illness and financial ruin.
Hospitals cannot simultaneously operate ethically as for-profits. No sector that deals with basic human necessities can. Moreover, continuing to allow this industry to exploit Oregon extracts money for necessary care from our community while it forces our neighbors out of a job. McKenzie-Willamette does not operate in the health or labor interests of you and your community.
I, like many others, am directly opposed to a system of health care that extorts money from those that require medical attention. It is morally just and in the benefit of all Oregonians that McKenzie and all institutions like it be seized and replaced under a universal public option.
Universal Health Coverage, an extension to familiar policies like Bernie Sanders’ Medicare For All proposal, would provide people with full access to the health services they require. Such a program is regarded as a “strategic priority” by the World Health Organization as a dire cause requiring international action to provide health care to the half of the world’s population that lacks it.
It is simply unacceptable that in the United States, one of the most advanced nations, health care still exists not to heal but to funnel money out of your hands. For if there was no profit margin for hospitals, then McKenzie-Willamette would have no need to outsource their local workers.
America’s medical industry cannot always endure, and, with significant organization and labor force, its greedy grasp on us can be broken. Let COVID-19 be the radicalization that allows us to gaze at the abhorrent reality of American health care.
I wish for a brighter future: one where our medical infrastructure exists not for the interests of a Tennessee corporation, but for the well-being of my neighbors. For now, however, I wish the best and solidarity to the Local 49 in its struggle against an industry for what health care workers so rightly deserve.
