Catholic Hospitals

Is it true that the Roman Catholic Church now owns the most hospitals in the country and is using this influence to keep women from getting abortions/birth control/etc.? This just smacks a little too much of Jack Chick’s Pope==antichrist mentality to be taken at face value.

Well that’s a provocative first post. Perhaps you’d like to give us a link so we can take a look at the source of information which prompted your question.

I think that’s a complement. :wink:

here is the printed example I came across tonight, but I have heard it from other people in “real life.”

It’s a concern in Buffalo, New York. There’s a few secular and public hospitals, but the majority of hospitals in the region are Catholic. No “Lutheran Medical Center” or “Jewish Hospital” – most people get their surgery at St. Something-or-Another.

I don’t think it is a conspiracy of the Catholic Church.
From a mental health hospital perspective, there is a lot more advantage in running a “non-for-profit” hospital. The days of the private “for profit” hospitals are numbered.

Hospitals have multiple things working against their bottom line. Namely, the insurance companies (and Medicaid/Medicare) determine how much a procedure is worth. Also there are so many people without any form of health insurance that are forced into making payments or worse yet, bankruptcy.

I don’t think it is much Catholic hospital growth, as much as private hospital decline

Another hole in your Catholic conspiracy theory is the fact that extremely few abortions are preformed in full-scale hospitals. Birth control is usually received through private physicians and pharmacies, without any intervention from a hospital.

My mother works in a hospital here in Austin. It once was secular, but was taken over by a Catholic-affiliated hospital, and now no longer performs abortions. Whether it’s due to some conspiracy is a matter of conjecture, but it happens, nonetheless.

I also think there is an error in the OP’s assumption that the RCC owns these hospitals. I doubt in fact that the RCC owns any of them.