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![[ The march steps off Wade Oval for East 105th Street ]](/images/hospital-march-crowd.jpg)
Mt. Sinai East in Richmond Heights has been granted a reprieve by the Bankruptcy Court, and a similar ruling for St. Michael is expected on Friday. It appears right now, Thursday night, that the dire warnings from the major media that PHS can't meet this week's payroll have been overblown. So community hospital supporters can relax just a little bit--for the first time, they have a few crisis-free days to regroup and plan for the future.
On the west side, there is still Deaconess, where the situation is still awfully hard to discern. Since Deaconess is probably a little more fiscally stable than the other threatened hospitals, well, you'd expect a bidder to have come forward by now. And in times like these, institutions usually like to put out reassuring messages.
The most likely outcome that keeps Deaconess open would be some very close kind of affiliation with Metro, but nothing of the sort has been made public. St. Michael and Mt. Sinai East will be auctioned in about a month.
Don't be surprised if the "Save Our Hospitals" movement turns to church institutions and neighborhood-oriented foundations for funding to acquire or share a hospital come late April. Deaconess, for one, may go as cheaply as $6 million, which is still a stretch but within the possible reach of some enterprising endowments. St. Michael and Mt. Sinai East, together, could cost the successful bidder about $20-30 million.
Whatever form a solution takes, don't look to City Hall for any significant help. Some individual Council members have made appropriate noises; Polensek has been especially outspoken for someone whose ward has no hospitals at all. In theory Council could conceivably vote through a dedicated-revenue bond issue to purchase one or more hospitals. In reality, the city has been out of the hospital business for decades, and the Mayor's side of City Hall is not about to let that change.
Cuyahoga County, on the other hand, could help. The Commissioners don't mind funding social services, and Metro sets a precedent for public hospital ownership. The question now is how ready the three-member Commission is to put together a viable deal.
A question on everybody's mind has been, "Where were all the politicians when PHS declared bankruptcy?" It wouldn't be unreasonable to go further back--where were they when PHS's bank financing became shaky in 1997?
The Plain Dealer's curmudgeon Dick Feagler took a swipe earlier this week against Dennis Kucinich, claiming that he merely took hold of a win-win issue. If St. Michael survives this bankruptcy, says the columnist, Kucinich will be a hero. If it doesn't, Kucinich will still get credit for the guts to lead the charge. Feagler describes this sneeringly, as though standing up for a constituency is a bad thing, but all Broadway loves Kucinich because of his willingness to crusade, win or lose.
Give Kucinich an office and a platform, and he'll do what he does best. It's political drama, but it works because the bulk of the voters and activists want it to work, and that's because the hospital-closing issue already resonates with the people's passions.
Without diminishing the money, energy, and motivation that made this organizing possible, politically both Polensek and Kucinich saw where the people's parade was going to be headed, and got out in front early. If your political base is with the constituents who elect you, that's always a risk-free maneuver. If, on the other hand, you're dependent on other people's approval, it comes off as obvious pandering. Feagler's confusion suggests he doesn't know the difference.
...that was Number 6 on Saul Alinsky's list of principles for community
organizing.
![[ Five-year-old activist Ben Schumann takes to the street. ]](/images/hospital-march-ben.jpg)
Which leads to last Sunday's rally and march on the Cleveland Clinic. In numbers estimated at "hundreds" (Channel 5) to "almost two thousand" (Kucinich), the crowd was hopeful, angry, and energized. AFSCME and the SEIU were prominent, probably accounting for half the marchers. Most of the rest were neighbors, health care workers, and a few people you might call freelance activists. Calling it a mass movement would be exaggeration, but it was indeed a viable coalition.
There have been candlelight vigils, rallies, press interviews, and more than a few speeches. A few dozen people even took the unusual action of personally showing up at the Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware, this Wednesday.
There is absolutely, of course, an element of theater to all this. The morale boost that comes from vocal participation cannot be denied. Working towards a cause makes people feel good. Getting people to do that makes a politician look good.
But it all began with Broadway's deeply felt need to protect a beloved institution. Without that, the rallying cries would have been too faint to hear.
![[ Broadway neighbors lampoon the Cleveland Clinic slogan ]](/images/hospital-march-sign.jpg)
This document's template was last modified on Wednesday, 09-Nov-2005 18:51:58 EST. There is a new Cleveland Pages more or less every weekend. The entire Cleveland Pages website is © 1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,2003 by Mark W. Schumann, all rights reserved. Copyrights belonging to others on individual items are noted. Nobody else would take the credit or blame for these opinions anyway.
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