Biblical Medicine? How Religious Corporations Are Gobbling Up Healthcare Facilities

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/biblical-medicine-how-religious-corporations-are-gobbling-healthcare-facilities?paging=off



Catholic hospitals and healthcare corporations are becoming “health care ministries.”

Biblical Medicine? How Religious Corporations Are Gobbling Up Healthcare Facilities
By Valerie Tarico
May 23, 2013

When it comes to matters of individual conscience, Washington State voters have a don’t-mess-with-us attitude that makes Texans look like cattle—and it goes way back.

In 2012 Washington voters flexed their muscle by legalizing recreational marijuana use and marriage for same-sex couples. In 2008, death with dignity passed some counties by as much as 75 percent. In 2006, Washington lawmakers outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In 1991 a citizen initiative established that “every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse birth control” and “every woman has the fundamental right to choose or refuse abortion.” It also guaranteed an absolute right to privacy around mental health and reproductive issues for teens aged 13 and up. Washington state’s constitution includes an Equal Rights Amendment and (from the get-go) a stronger wall of separation between church and state than the U.S. Constitution.

In other words, west of Moscow, Idaho, and north of Portland, any bishops who want to control what they think of as their sacramental turf --birth, coming of age, sex, marriage, trippy transcendent experiences, and death—haven’t got a chance in hell at the ballot box. Washington even has extended statutes of limitations on child sex abuse—something Archbishop Timothy Dolan successfully fended off in New York and Pennsylvania. The Archdiocese of Spokane declared bankruptcy.

But the Vatican hasn’t survived for 1,500 years by being stupid. And as my devout family members like to say, “Where God closes a door, he opens a window.” The window the bishops found open in Washington takes the form of independent hospitals with financial problems.