Editor’s note: While these letters are from residents of Healdsburg and focus on Healdsburg, the Healdsburg District Hospital is paid for and utilized by residents of Windsor. To learn more about all the ballot measures, including Measure BB, click here.
Seller beware
Editor:
Seller beware! Catholic healthcare is an industry backed by the Catholic church and intent on restricting the services it offers to align with Catholic religious principles. While the number of secular hospitals fell between 2001 and 2016, the number of Catholic hospitals rose by 22%. Their “secular” agreement banning some personal legal healthcare options with Healdsburg District Hospital and its affiliated services mirrors this.
There is nothing in the proposal to stop further implementation of Catholic restrictions on care not only in the hospital but its clinics as well. While the Catholic Church is worth untold billions of dollars, they want your tax dollars and insurance dollars as well. Your parcel tax dollars, an estimated $3.25 million, will be going to support a discriminatory healthcare system (you will pay even if you are a Sutter or Kaiser patient). This system limits a woman’s reproductive choices, a person’s right to die and transgender rights. This is the true cost to taxpayers to keep our local hospital.
Karen Fraire
Healdsburg
Yes on Measure BB
Editor:
On Nov. 3, along with all the other consequential choices we need to make, is a proposal to approve the sale of our Healdsburg Hospital to an affiliate of Providence St Joseph Healthcare (to be called NorCal Health Connect). The emergency care our hospital offers is widely praised, timely and high quality, especially for conditions like stroke and heart attack. Without it, North County residents face a much longer ride to the next hospital south. And, without the sale, our emergency department services will disappear.
As a concerned resident of Healdsburg, and as a retired physician, I was happy to sign onto the ballot initiative which we will see in full when the ballots are mailed out at the beginning of October. However, the most important support on Nov. 3 is yours. Even though the ballot will be long, and our proposal is positioned near the end, please vote and vote all the way down to a yes on Measure BB.
Jed Weissberg, MD
Healdsburg
Big Brother Needed
Editor:
I have been a physician in Healdsburg for 42 years. I have seen the beginning and end of life at Healdsburg District Hospital.
It has been a place close to home for my patients in the time of emergency, at times of convenience for routine and frightening procedures and a place of caring and comfort at times of death. It has been my privilege to work with a caring and dedicated staff that could make more money elsewhere but worked here because they cared about their community.
The sale of the hospital is not a giveaway of our hard-earned resources, but a guarantee those resources will remain in our community. If a small hospital is going to survive (when 50% of the hospitals this size have closed in the past 10 years) the business reality is that you need a big brother.
There is no compromise in the values or ideals or services the hospital will offer. As Tom Selleck says in his commercial, “This isn’t my first rodeo,” and if I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t support it.
R. Andolsen MD
Healdsburg
