To the Editor:

It was a glitzy occasion in May of 2012 when handsome Dr. Ralph de la Torre looked out over the expanse of white-clothed dining tables at the elegant Quincy Links Restaurant and promised the assembled Quincy politicians and notables, the eager staff of our multi-site community health center, and the specialist physicians who supported our mission, that his innovative for-profit model of care would not only rescue financially flailing Quincy Hospital but also begin a new era of prosperity for the city.

Fresh from his purchase of the Caritas Christi chain of hospitals as well as Quincy Hospital, Dr. de la Torre glowed with confidence, and we all believed him. We needed to believe him.

Quincy hospital had been financially tenuous for years, the Caritas Christi system had already lost one of its hospitals, and the federal and state government had no discernible interest in intervening. The backbone of inpatient care for so many neighborhoods, towns and cities, these community hospitals charged one third as much as the tertiary medical centers for common surgeries but didn’t have the muscle to wrestle the insurers for the high reimbursement rates that the tertiary medical centers were paid.

Though now retired, I still lament the loss of Quincy Medical Center where for the first half of my career most of the babies in Quincy were born and the quality of the  Emergency Room was second to none. In retrospect it is clear that Dr.de la Torre is a shyster but we wouldn’t have fallen for his schemes had single payer Medicare for All been implemented as described in bills H.1239/S.744. (see masscare.org). The global hospital payments are based on community needs and use patterns rather than insurance funding formulas that favor the large, powerful academic hospitals.

Now the Carney Hospital, another Steward Hospital, is at financial risk. It is time for our health care system to be based on need, not profit. Massachusetts is as big as many countries that have successful and far less expensive nationalized healthcare. Dr de la Torre was able to convince us that his profits would improve our health because our entire healthcare delivery system is built on extracting profits. Let’s protect the Carney and the rest of the Steward hospitals and pass single payer Medicare for All.

Martha Karchere, MD, MPH