I could use it as a house...if it's free!

Meg, Thanks for keeping me up to date on things going on in my own area. It is really nice to have a Chicago input on this site.

Fox should take it over, I'm sure they could find some use for it.

Awww man! This is heart breaking. We're already short on doctors, nurses, and other qualified health care staff. Now we're losing our hospitals. Schools are shutting down. People losing their homes left and right. Is it me or is our country devolving?

Move to Canada.

Depressing.

This is why we need proper border patrol... they funnel money out of the economy and make the government or charitable organizations pay.

Ah, the beauty of illegal immigration. Now who will treat (for free of course) the diseases they bring to the US that we wiped out a century ago? Illegal immigration never hurt anyone.....

Illegal immigration....

Toof_75_75: Living in an abandoned hospital, horror movie in the making.

I'm not going to question the economy as there are pleanty of other areas that have growth.

I do think there is aproblem with the health care system here in the US. And i do not believe it is the governments job to provide health care. I have no doubt that as soon as health care is abolished completely, as well as insurance. Medical costs will drop tremendously. 35 dollars for a pill is outrageous, and they only get away with it because insurance will help cover the cost. if no one can buy it, they will lower the price.

@Toof_75_75: I doubt you'd want to pay the property taxes.

My wife says the same thing. Most of the patients she cares for aren't paying one way or the other. The debt is coming down on her floor in the form of cheaper equipment, cut staff, etc. Not a good situation to be in.

@johnva: It would totally be worth it. Deck it out in a Silent Hill way. Get some bloody limbless nurses and creepy babies. Oh man, that would be awesome.

@Superborty, @telepheedian:

Why did you both just assume that illegal immigration was the cause of this? More likely, it mostly has to do with uninsured Americans and people on Medicaid. Insurance companies are also constantly ripping off hospitals and delaying payment for as long as possible, which can't be helping their cashflow. Hospitals are going bankrupt all over the place, and it's not primarily due to illegal immigration except possibly in places that have a high concentration of that.

@TheBestMaxEver: it's just you.

This is partly because of illegal immigration. But surely there are many legal citizens w/o health insurance.

Bring on all the pro-universal healthcare people. The solution to this is health-care reform, (NOT universal healthcare). Bring healthcare back into the markets, with competition. Put the price on the wall. Competition will drive prices down, thus more can afford good healthcare.

@johnva: Actually, can you prove that is more likely? Probably not because it isn't. Fact is illegal immigration is killing our healthcare (insurance companies are certainly trying to do their part too). It is the local taxpayers who have to pick up the bills or in this case, the private hospital that has to shut down to the detriment of the local residents. It is time people start talking about these issues.

that is so sad, and it really underscores the problems in our current system of healthcare

Well in Chicago in might not to have a lot to do with immigration. I know a lot of hospitals near the border with Mexico have a lot of issues with illegals showing up and the hospital being unable to refuse care.

I think everyone here will agree the price for health care is too expensive. Both Republicans and Democrats can agree on that. I think both parties see a need for reform. Democrats may think republicans are satisfied with the system, we're not. Our differences lie in the solution to the problem, not the problem itself.

The costs aren't going to go away. Whether you pay for insurance, and your insurance pays the bill, or whether your taxes go through the roof, and the government pays the bill, either way you will be paying for it. However with the government involved, you'll be paying the same, or higher cost. I don't think that solution will drive down costs, mainly because it's driving out competition and market change.

What we need is to reform the way we talk to insurance companies, and the way they talk to our doctors and hospitals. By making a doctor visit more like getting your car fixed, that will drive down costs. If costs subside, insurance will come down, hospital prices will come down, medical technology will come down. Everything will come down. If you don't atleast agree with me on Supply and Demand, I give up.

@Toof_75_75:

I could use it as a house...if it's free!

Yep, just turn the 410 rooms to about 41 really rich units and basically... profit!!

I figure the following

3-bedroom
2-bath
1-living/entertainment room
1-kitchen
1-storage
1-office
1-dining room

Now you can make variations on this say

4-bedroom
2-bath
1-living/entertaiment
1-storage/office
1-kitchen/dining area

See I have ideas... we could turn the largest parking lot to a drive in covered parking lot.

@Bladefist-안녕: "Universal health care" is not the same thing as government or socialized healthcare, just to let you know. We could have universal healthcare in a private system if everyone could afford it. But we both know that's not going to happen.

Look, this story shows problems with both private payment of health insurance AND government payment. The hospitals are the loser in both cases, because the uninsured people can't pay and the private insurers and government insurer (Medicaid) don't pay enough. Reform is needed, no matter what you favor.

But I'm not going to accept conservative/libertarian dogma that free markets are always the most efficient solution. There is a lot of evidence that healthcare is a relatively unique case where that's not going to work out and we need (at the very least) a heavily regulated system. It sort of combines aspects of fire department coverage (where no one wants to pay for it until they need it) and roads (where government ownership yields large economic benefits by removing barriers to trade and economic activity).

@Bladefist-안녕: The problem with that theory is if I have a broken leg, I'm not going to comparison shop hospitals to see which one has the best price. Health care is never going to work like other markets, because the need for it is often both urgent and inelastic.

One thing this story reveals is that, universal care or not, we all end up paying for medical care of uninsured people. Hospitals cannot legally turn away people who need urgent care, so they pass the cost along to other patients. The punchline is that urgent emergency care is the most expensive way to deliver health care -- we'd be better off overall if we found a way to get preventative care to many of these people before their health conditions turned into emergencies.

And, incidentally, the importance of preventative care is the hole in the argument I usually hear from conservatives -- that the problem with the health care system is people are getting too much care, because they don't see what it costs. Asking people to stay away from their doctors and not get checkups would be a false economy.

@Superborty: The facts don't agree with you, outside of areas with a high concentration of illegal immigrants. Do you have any concept of how many people are on Medicaid? Or how many Americans are uninsured? Or how many insurance companies pay ridiculously low amounts as reimbursement for procedures? All of these things dwarf the illegal immigrant problem. I'm not saying that's not contributing to the problem; it surely is. I'm just saying that it's only a lesser part of why hospitals are going bankrupt all over.

Wow, our country is full of morons if you think illegal immigration is the main cause of this. The south side of Chicago is obviously not a wealthy area. Most people living in that area (actual Americans) do not have any type of health insurance. To go to any type of doctor this means hitting up the emergency room for free visits. Sore throat? emergency room. Am i pregnant? emergency room. etc etc.

Illegal immigrants may be a small percentage of the problem but the main problem is too many people in this country do not have health insurance. The health insurance industry is all about making a buck instead of saving lives. National health insurance may not be perfect but it cannot be any worse for those with no insurance! Everyone in this country deserves health insurance. Black, white, yellow, green, whatever the race/ethnicity.

With the current cost of health care I'm actually surprised with don't see this more often. There is always a lot of talk about health care reform but I never seem to see any real action being taken.

Now I rarely listen when a politicans talk about it. Well I listen but they just sound like charlie brown's teacher to me , waa whaa-whaa waa

@Orv: @johnva:

Good commentary. I'll agree with you that healthcare is special. But I stand by my beliefs it can be solved by the market and people. Not government.

We don't even try anymore. Everytime something isn't ideal, we look at our government. It's like we're trained little lap dogs.

I'll say this, I wish/want everyone to have good health care, however, my money is my money, and I do not want to pay my for my neighbors healthcare. Beyond that, do whatever.

For 4 years in college, I had to pay 75$ a semester for on-campus healthcare. I never went once. Such BS. I couldn't even opt out. I had health insurance from my parents job. I didn't need anything they offered. So whatever this country does, let me opt out. I'll always take care of myself.

sure, close the border...but make sure all the lawyers are on the other side first...

@johnva: Yea, no illegal immigrants in Chicago. Never hear of such nonsense....

@Bladefist-안녕: Competition and price transparency are not silver bullets here. Patients receiving care at a hospital are not often in a position to "shop around" for cheaper care...usually you're stuck with the set of providers associated with that hospital. Second, patients are not experts on healthcare (nor should they have to be), and are not in a position to correctly weigh the costs vs. benefits of a particular medical treatment or diagnostic test. Third, pricing is not a great way to encourage/discourage use of healthcare resources...sometimes people simply NEED a certain procedure, and they won't be discouraged because it's expensive (or if they are, they could "pay" with their health). Healthcare should be based on scientific evidence that weighs the best outcome for the best value, not just on "market forces". That's another big problem with just expecting the public to shop around for their own healthcare...lots of people would pick slickly marketed woo-woo "alternative" treatments peddled by quacks over real care, and end up making their conditions worse (costing the real healthcare system MORE down the road).

It's not just a disagreement about the means that I have with conservatives. It's that conservative economic ideology is fundamentally at odds with the facts and reality in this case. Y'all like to make tidy arguments that assume everyone is rational and that there is a magic market-based solution to everything. The reality is different. Conservatives don't present real solutions to the problems. Instead, they choose solutions that agree with their ideological preconceptions, without bothering to think deeply about the problems, too often. I actually used to agree with you, but I've experienced too much of this myself and had too many conservations with knowledgeable people to agree anymore.

@Superborty: Perhaps the folks that employ those illegal immigrants? From what I hear, they save a pretty penny on labor costs...

@johnva: Even people with medical insurance don't receive amazing treatment or get it at all. Nobody has any idea what Illegal Immigrants from all countries cost us they make numbers up based on some statics they generally pull out of their ass, both republicans and democrats.

The real problem is Immigration in general.

Yes we all immigrated here(except the Mexican's and Indian's we just took their land). But there comes a time in any countries life that they need to stop allowing people in when immigration no longer helps your country grow.

We need to close all borders off and tighten the belt on hand outs.

Giving grants to people who just came over seas (legally) while our own citizens starve is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. And if you don't think we do Come to NJ I'll show you around the cities of Edison where it's the largest Indian City out side of India in the entire world. And they have a system of importing their own here and setting them up with government grants to open their own businesses .

look it up it's sick.

@Bladefist-안녕: Depending on what your healthcare costs are like, that $75 a semester could have been a bargain. A lot of campus health clinics offer copay-free treatment, which can be really nice for people who need a lot of doctor visits or expensive prescription drugs.

I'm sad, that is where I was born!

@johnva: Well I 100% believe the opposite of you. You're description of conservatives is my exact description of liberals. Word for Word.

There will never be global, universal, social, whatever else healthcare in America. We cannot afford it, Obama cant make it happen, Hillary cant make it happen. We are a two party system, and it'll just never happen. Mark my words. The costs just cant be done with how america is setup.

@Superborty: Did I say there were "none"? No. I said that it was a smaller fraction of the problem than the other things mentioned. A high fraction of Medicaid and uninsured patients are specifically cited in the article as causes of this particular bankruptcy. There are a lot more uninsured Americans than there are illegal immigrants in this country. I feel you're just harping on this issue because it's a convenient way to place blame instead of fixing the deeper problems.

If you don't have cash cows to balance out your non payers (or underpayers) you go out of business. Period. So if the bulk of your patients don't pay or on medicaid you run in the negative with no overly positive cash flow to balance it out.

Being a hospital in a huge city located within a large section of the lower income neighborhoods would create the negative cash flow situation.

The small metro I live in, the two hospital groups found a way to balance it out. It also helps that geographically they end up serving all sections of society. They put in high priced medical spas and these swanky high tech athletic performance medical clinics in the south side of town. The people with too much money to throw around flock to these places and pay some pretty crazy amounts of money for non-mandatory services. Both hospitals also own their own health insurance programs that they rake quite a bit of cash out of. This compensates for the money they lose from uninsured, elderly and illegal immigrants. But I can tell you that the clinic facilities in the poor part of town vs. the swanky part of town are night and day different.

But at least they are not going out of business.

@Bladefist-안녕: You are already paying for others healthcare. The cost of the uninsured is rolled into the amount (still exorbitant) you pay when you go to the doctor. However medical costs are too high. I know they pay ridiculous amounts for malpractice insurance and other cost but as other have pointed out aspirin should never cost $35 (which I have billed). I use to work for a health insurance company and we investigated how charges were higher for the insured, especially those with medicare/medicaid, than those bills we saw that paid out of pocket. So while I agree that the insurance industry needs to be looked at so do the healthcare providers as well.

@AaronC:

You need to understand why a pill costs $35. Most of it is due to the extensive testing required by the FDA. People sue Merck because Vioxx causes heart attacks, even though the FDA cleared the drug for sale to the public?

You want drugs that are 100% safe? Be prepared to pay $35/pill.

@johnva: I was 21 years old. If its a cold, stay home until its cured, if its cancer, you're not going to the campus center anyway. From what I hear that place was pretty much always a ghost town. Boy did that liberal ran college make a killing off its students.

Healthcare costs are rapidly rising in the US because there is no rationing of healthcare like there is in gov't universal healthcare.

Canada can keep it's healthcare costs down because they tell patients to wait weeks for an MRI or months for orthapedic surgery.

I wonder if the cost of uninsured patients is really what put this hospital under. What put this hospital under is the cost of the procedures and hospital services that had to be covered because the uninsured couldn't pay. And what causes those costs to be so outrageously high is the malpractice insurance. My son just had tubes put in his ears. 10 minute surgery. Gas mask anesthesia. Total cost: $4000. Of which I paid 1k +20%. Now, I can scream that the surgeon's fee of $1300 (before insurance) for a 10 minute procedure is asinine, which it is. But how much of that is going to cover his malpractice insurance for when some disgruntled patient sues him for $10 million because timmy's tubes fell out 1 month early? In other words, even if hospitals could stand to substantially reduce the cost of their services (what kind of price is $1200 for sitting in a cubicle bed for 25 minutes), they still have to tack on significant sums to cover their insurance, which they obviously pass on to the patients. The whole system is broken. But giving people health insurance willy-nilly isn't going to fix it.

@Bladefist-안녕: The costs are lower than what we're doing right now, according to most estimates. Private insurance (especially through employers) is an incredibly inefficient way of funding healthcare. We pay at least double the administrative overhead of any other country in our healthcare costs. So if we can afford what we're doing now, we can afford single-payer national health insurance. I also find it amazing that anyone thinks we can't "afford" it when we're one of the biggest economies in the world. We CHOOSE NOT TO spend the money on that, but that doesn't mean we can't. I agree that it's going to be a tough political fight though, mainly because of people like you. I'm kind of doubtful that it can happen unless there is a filibuster-proof Democratic supermajority in Congress. Instead, we'll probably get a watered-down public-private hybrid system. Neither Hillary nor Obama has proposed single-payer or nationalized healthcare, BTW.

@telepheedian: @Superborty: @Skankingmike: Yes, I think we'd all like to see some evidence at all to back up your rather large claims.

Put your money where your mouths are, trolls. Please provide any shred of evidence whatsoever that illegal immigrants put this hospital out of business.

@Skankingmike: Bonus points if you can possibly explain why having Indian immigrants open businesses with government grants (likely legal, per your statements that they are from India and qualify for business grants) is worse than having Jersey remain economically stagnant. I think it's been a while since Trenton was a shining jewel of of a city, no?

@Bladefist-안녕: Supply and demand can't be applied, at leat in the free market way I think your' re implying should eb used for healthcare.

Supply and demand systems only really come into economic play when time is not at a minimum. If you're having a heart attack, or bleeding to death from the results of an accident, you don't have time to shop around. Which kind of defeats the application of the free market and supply and demand.

The only choice in a free market health care system, in an emergency situation, is choosing to pay or choosing to die. Which is generally not regarded as a choice per se to most people.

With a purely free market system, the paramedics could realisticly demand payment for services, before they load you up and take you to the hospital. And that's not even a straw man argument.

Health insurance, at least hypothetically, allows the free market into the system in some scale, by allowing people to shop around for a service price they find acceptable before the fact.

I'm not saying the system doesn't need changes, and some major ones at that, but before suggesting to scrap everything you should consider why and how things would up in place.

@johnva: We cant afford it because we have low taxes, when compared with countries that have socialized care.
[en.wikipedia.org]

As far as its costing us more, eh. My health insurance here is free. You could argue that if my company wasn't paying for it, I would make slightly more money. You could argue that. If we switched to gov healthcare tomorrow, I doubt my boss is going to come down to my office and give me a 300$/mo raise because he isnt paying my insurance anymore. just wont happen lol

Well, here are my thoughts about the hospital closing. I have really close ties with the hospital and over the years, a number of homeless and drug addicts walk in off the street and request care.

In the winter time, they have a warming area to keep the homeless warm. Now, being that I have medical insurance, if I slice my finger, I'm going to go down the street to Palos or Christ. Why? Well, when you walk into the emergency room and it smells and all you see are homeless, it makes you wonder what kind of place this is. And unfortunately, since they are homeless, they don't have any money or care.

Next topic, drug and alcohol addicts. There are times where these addicts don't want to spend the money to buy drugs, so they will go to the hospital and get them for free. Doctors there will give patients morphine, vicodin, and anything in between. Why would you pay somebody on the corner some money when you can just walk in and get the drugs, a warm place to stay, and some food all for free!?!

As bad as this sounds, if St. Francis wanted to start making some money, they would throw out the homeless and addictions and start cleaning everything up. It looks like it's too late for that now and the hospital will close. It's sad, but what else can they do.

@Bladefist-안녕: You have a narrow view of healthcare that is colored by your own experiences. Not everyone is healthy at 21 years old. People have chronic illnesses, etc, which have to be treated regularly. A lot of females in college use the clinics to get birth control at lower cost. You may need some other prescription drug monthly, too (antidepressants are a big one in college). In other words, there is a lot in between a "cold" and "cancer". Maybe your campus health clinic just sucked. The ones at the two universities I attended were very good and highly utilized, and could provide even specialty care in areas common among college students. And again, $75 a semester is REALLY CHEAP for what most of those places provide.