Showing posts with label Framingham Union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Framingham Union. Show all posts

June 16, 2009

Hospital hypocrisy

Does anyone else find irony in a company that brings for-profit capitalism to healthcare complaining about "unfair competition" if another institution invades what it considers its monopoly-protected turf?

MetroWest Medical Center is owned by Vanguard Health Systems, a multi-billion-dollar company that turned a $16 million profit from the (continuing) operations of 15 hospitals around the country in the last quarter. Vanguard Health Systems' Web site boasts that the company brings "the business acumen of a privately owned organization" and "the strengths of a for-profit corporation" to its hospitals (although good luck finding anything about that on the MetroWest hospitals' own site).

You can't have it both ways. You can't take advantage of free-market capitalism to earn a profit for investors from treating people's injuries and illnesses, and then complain about competition.