If they have an emergency room, they are required by federal law to provide life-saving care to whomever walks in. When the indigent or illegal aliens don't pay, hospitals get a little $$$ from the federales. Not enough to cover, but a little something.
thene there is medicaid & medicare.
If I were them, I would close my ER and refuse indigent patients, those on medicaid, and those on medicare.
You gotta remember that one of the goals of leftists is to crowd out the private sector. Destroying Christian hospitals is just one step in their plan.
Just FYI, this topic has very little to do with uninsured or illegal aliens.
Abortion, however, has arguably nothing to do with emergency room care. Those are miscarriages or premature births, not abortions. Let's try to divorce the ER from the rest of the hospital or clinic. Lots of Catholic clinics, counseling centers or health centers that aren't necessarily ER facilities.
The stretch to medicare is plausible when discussing federal funding and the effect that might have on approved or mandatory treatments for the hospital or clinic to offer.
It really struck me as self-destructive legislation at this point in the article:
Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops' fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. "It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions," he said. "That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil."
Since these hospitals are private property, the Church would be well within their rights to clear out all the medical equipment and ship it out of country, then demolition the building or convert it to some other form of community outreach other than medicine. I find it very unlikely that they would sell the properties, since the people who would want it most would be someone wanting a hospital (to comply with FOCA and therefor perform abortions). Unscrupulous middle-men would be very likely, and the Church simply wouldn't want to risk that.
Unless, of course, Eminent Domain is exercised against the Church. Wouldn't that be entertaining.
