Save Braddock Hospital

BRADDOCK, Pa.--About 160 people gathered on January 30 in the heart of the Mon Valley outside of Pittsburgh, in the town where Andrew Carnegie's first steel mills were located, to protest the closing of the local hospital.

Like many other communities, Braddock, with its scores of vacant buildings, has been left behind and forgotten. In the 1920s, the town was more densely populated than Brooklyn, but today the population is barely 3,000. Another blow came January 31 when the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) announced it was closing their Braddock hospital.

This rally is the latest event in three months of organizing against the impending closure. UPMC, according to its Web site, is an "$8 billion global health enterprise," which has expanded to Italy, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Qatar. When UPMC, a so-called non-profit institution, took up residence in the old U.S. Steel Tower, it erected a sign that cost $750,000.

At the same time that UPMC was laying off workers in Braddock, it began construction on a new hospital in Monroeville, another Pittsburgh suburb, presumably to compete with a hospital a mile away.

Braddock's closure is all the more hypocritical because UPMC was credited with doing check-ups on the more than 50 Haitian orphans that were airlifted into the U.S., landing in Pittsburgh with a personal escort from Gov. Ed Rendell. The orphans were seen at UPMC's Children's Hospital, which moved last spring for a state-of-the-art $625 million new campus, leaving a vacant building in its old location.

UPMC Braddock is the largest employer in the borough and houses the town's only restaurant and ATM. Going to another hospital would be out of reach for many seniors. Despite the fact that UPMC Braddock's occupancy rate was more than 70 percent--a higher rate than at least six other hospitals in the county--low occupancy is the most frequently cited reason for why it must be closed.

The rally, sponsored by the Save Our Community Hospitals coalition with a theme of "We are Alive," was spirited, despite the five-degree weather. Braddock Mayor John Fetterman attended the protest and vowed to continue the fight for community hospitals.

Braddock council member Tina Doose recounted being treated at UPMC Braddock as a teenager after being attacked with a knife, and how she survived because the hospital was located in her hometown. Two council members spoke at the rally and said they were not made aware of the decision to shut down the hospital until after it was done.

Local labor singer Mike Stout led protesters in a rendition of "Which Side Are You On?" and a local performance artist and accordionist, Steve Pellegrino, played a song titled "Andrew Carnegie Was a Jagoff" about the repressive history of the robber barons in Allegheny County.

An attorney said that they planned to take the fight to the state Supreme Court in order to overturn an earlier court's decision that said it was legal to close the hospital.

Local physicians' assistant and life-long radical activist Mel Packer said, "UPMC, which is used to having its way, a Goliath that easily pockets most of our local politicians, has chosen to lock the doors of this hospital and walk away.

"The very same Goliath that falsely tries to claim most of the credit for the rescue of Haitian orphans now offers no similar rescue to the citizens of the greater Braddock area. And so the questions becomes, will those of us here simply accept defeat, or will we continue the struggle to force UPMC to become another fallen Goliath?"

Protesters carried signs reading "Shame on UPMC," "Save Braddock" and "Yes Health Care, No Wealth Care." The names of UPMC's board of directors were hung around the hospital's parking lot and many decried UPMC's CEO Jeffrey Romoff, whose compensation was nearly $4.5 million in 2008.

After the hour-long rally, protesters marched to the front of the hospital, chanting, "UPMC does not care!"

Despite the fact that Pittsburgh and its many suburbs have been hit hard by deindustrialization, residents aren't taking it lying down. Single-payer supporters, Pittsburgh progressives and Braddock residents have joined together to make UPMC know that if the Democratic Party politicians won't take on this for-profit hospital and its greedy ways, we will and we will not be shaken by apparent defeat.

Find out more at the Save Our Community Hospitals Web site.