Aurora, Colo., lies just east of the Rocky Mountains, adjacent to Denver and is the third-largest Colorado city. It has many amenities, including 80 parks and seven public golf courses. Some of the amenities are in a place you might not expect-the University of Colorado Medical Center’s new hospital.
In addition to the normal hospital services, it will offer four luxury suites. These suites come complete with a private chef and new flat-screen televisions. They’ll grace the hospital’s 12th floor, facing picturesque Pikes Peak. They’ll also cost you an extra $600 a day.
Private hospitals have been offering this deal for a while, but the UC hospital is believed to be the first public hospital in the country to do so.
Why are we wasting money on private chefs and flat screen televisions? That money could be used to fix up the “normal” rooms, or provide health care to people who couldn’t normally afford it.
Jeff Peters, president of Health Directions, a health care consulting firm based in Chicago, said that these types of rooms are a growing trend in the country.
“You may want to go to a … facility but the reluctance has been with the paying patients who say, ‘Do I really want to go there? I may be in a room next to a mother on public aid,'” he said.
What is wrong with being next to a mother on public aid? She’s still a person, a human being who needs help. If someone has a problem being in a room with a mother on public aid, then he doesn’t need to be in a public hospital.
“I think it’s a good idea. It’s a way to improve the financial performance of the hospital,” Peters said. The financial performance of the hospital? Of all things, health care should not be a moneymaking endeavor.
One opponent of the new hospital is Lorez Meinhold, executive director for the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a coalition of organizations that works to increase health care access. He summed up the project well when he said, “It’s further developing a two-tier health care system: one for those who can afford it and one for those who can’t.”
Meinhold commented that they are giving less to the poor because of the new luxury rooms. Hospital president Dennis Brimhall responded that the hospital’s main mission is not treating the poor but expanding a teaching and research institution.
I understand the necessity of research. I understand building research hospitals that concentrate solely on that task. I understand that it takes money to run a hospital. However, I don’t understand why a researcher trying to find cures for diseases wouldn’t want to help as many people as possible.
Cancel the suites. Build more rooms for everyone.
Jana Hatcher is a junior political science and psychology major. She can be reached at [email protected].