The Observation Deck

cmager wrote:

Bridget Conant wrote:

Those individuals and families in need for local charity hospital care or other acute-need healthcare services will just have to do by making better food choices until we can get those upscale town homes completed for the incoming wealthy residents.

Yes, and those who are needy are not the individuals who can frequent restaurants on a regular basis.

Perhaps they will simply select a healthier population, where everyone is above average. Can they redline the community based on BMI, blood pressure, or pre-existing conditions?

Perhaps taking their cue from the Cleveland Clinic, where smokers are banned from hiring, employees are forced to wear step trackers, and your healthcare coverage depends on how HEALTHY you are! Let’s say you have diabetes, unless you participate in strict control program supervised by your employer, you are penalized with higher premiums and less coverage. They’ve been doing this for years.

https://employeehealthplan.clevelandcli ... s10-12.pdf,

cmager wrote:

Bridget Conant wrote:

Those individuals and families in need for local charity hospital care or other acute-need healthcare services will just have to do by making better food choices until we can get those upscale town homes completed for the incoming wealthy residents.

Yes, and those who are needy are not the individuals who can frequent restaurants on a regular basis.

Perhaps they will simply select a healthier population, where everyone is above average. Can they redline the community based on BMI, blood pressure, or pre-existing conditions?

Frankly, Mr. Mager, they have.

Lakewood Hospital provided approximately $6,900,000 in annual charity care to a hospital cachment area serving approximately 145,000 individuals in Lakewood and surrounding communities.

This does not include services provided to Medicare or Medicaid patients. So...

Annually -- tens of millions of dollars of actual acute hospital care services were provided by Lakewood Hospital to Lakewood residents and those surrounding communities.

That ended in February 2016.

The next time you see Mike Summers, Ken Haber, or Tom Gable you might want to ask them why they declined to negotiate with Metro Health System on its $100,000,000 proposal to upgrade and right-size Lakewood Hospital.

They have redlined the neediest in our community in order to demolish our hospital and then literally give-away the land for what is being pitched as a high-end commercial development.

Mrs. A. M. Brooks would be appalled.

Bridget Conant wrote:

Those individuals and families in need for local charity hospital care or other acute-need healthcare services will just have to do by making better food choices until we can get those upscale town homes completed for the incoming wealthy residents.

Yes, and those who are needy are not the individuals who can frequent restaurants on a regular basis.

MEMORANDUM TO LOCAL DEMOCRATIC OFFICE HOLDERS:

President Obama and Congressional leaders did not fight to enact the Affordable Care Act and then fight to maintain its legal integrity so that you could shut-down actual local hospital care and replace it with "talk" about being "healthier".

Mark Kindt wrote:

cmager wrote:

Bridget Conant wrote:

Those individuals and families in need for local charity hospital care or other acute-need healthcare services will just have to do by making better food choices until we can get those upscale town homes completed for the incoming wealthy residents.

Yes, and those who are needy are not the individuals who can frequent restaurants on a regular basis.

Perhaps they will simply select a healthier population, where everyone is above average. Can they redline the community based on BMI, blood pressure, or pre-existing conditions?

Frankly, Mr. Mager, they have.

Lakewood Hospital provided approximately $6,900,000 in annual charity care to a hospital cachment area serving approximately 145,000 individuals in Lakewood and surrounding communities.

This does not include services provided to Medicare or Medicaid patients. So...

Annually -- tens of millions of dollars of actual acute hospital care services were provided by Lakewood Hospital to Lakewood residents and those surrounding communities.

That ended in February 2016.

The next time you see Mike Summers, Ken Haber, or Tom Gable you might want to ask them why they declined to negotiate with Metro Health System on its $100,000,000 proposal to upgrade and right-size Lakewood Hospital.

I think the person that needs to be asked is Sam O'leary. The Metro offer was revealed in plenty of time to derail the hospital closing. He went along with it. And the argument made by our city's social media maven, that Metro simply didn't have the money, has certainly been shown as one of the lamest arguments made to defend trading in a hospital for a "community foundation" and a stuck in the 90s development scheme.

https://www.metrohealth.org/transformation

But unfortunately pathological lying no longer appears to have negative consequences. So many truths have been revealed but people are more than happy to still go along. Right now, three of the four council ward races are contested. We need to vote these people and their chosen successors, out of office.

Metro General's credit worthiness is so good that it has been able to sell $960 million of bonds to finance its main campus rebuild and renovation.

Stan Austin wrote:Metro General's credit worthiness is so good that it has been able to sell $960 million of bonds to finance its main campus rebuild and renovation.

But our expert finance director Jennifer Pae claimed they didn’t have the financial strength to come into Lakewood and run the hospital.

Just how competent is she?

How truthful was she?

How can anyone believe in this administration?

The Magnitude of Lost Taxable Income Could Be $40,000,000

Most of the job losses in Lakewood were at incomes levels substantially higher than the median annual income figure used in this table.

That fact would increase the potential scale of lost taxable income significantly.

However, many whose jobs were relocated would still be subject to Lakewood income taxation as residents.

Still, as you can see, the impact of job relocation outside of Lakewood is significant.

Amusing, Democrats trying to understand how they became political chattel for the ambition, lies, deception and self interests of a Democrat city council and mayor. Lakewood, a city where business is discussed and decisions are made in back rooms. However, please continue to be the victim, it is the typical and foremast defense of the party but you will still vote on the same party lines.

Oh, the new school building that cost Lakewood taxpayers millions of dollars didn't help the school district 's scholastic state ratings. Could there be more to teaching children than brick and mortar?

Richard,
Surely you must understand by now that many of us agree with many of your points, minus the partisan sniping.

The Road Ahead Has Some Big Bumps

For Lakewood, the current city administration has guaranteed some pretty large bumps for the future:

1. Massive decline in available healthcare services to those residents with significant needs;

2. Significant losses in quality high-paying jobs;

3. Permanent reductions in public healthcare infrastructure;

4. A major loss in long-term federal investment support under the new tax code;

5. Substantial multi-year increases in water/sewer rates;

6. High levels of bonded indebtedness;

7. Loss of public confidence in basic norms of government;

8. Abandonment of essential revenue streams.

Need I go on?

Mr. Baker is correct in his assessment.

I am an old-fashioned Democrat articulating concerns about the elected local officials of my own party who should stand for something completely different than what they have delivered.

Are you suggesting the Socialist City of Lakewood provide health insurance to 5,000 uninsured residence? Ever hear of Obamacare, the bill that Democrats had to pass to understand and their answer to providing insurance to all those people that couldn’t afford private coverage? You know, the AHC program, that we were told we could keep our doctors, our policies and premiums would not go up, it is the same program that that few can afford the premiums due to the cost. Let’s examine the real coverage the AHC program expanded and that was Medicare. The bill almost doubled the maximum earnings for people to qualify for coverage or you can renounce your citizenship and get immediate coverage like illegal aliens.

According to the census Lakewood has 9.3 percent of the population without health insurance or about 4, 847 people. The majority are probably the young and health that don’t feel the need for coverage if their employee doesn’t provide it, or those who have not signed up for Medicare not needing it or in some cases a family that earnings exceed the maximum allowable income to qualify for Medicare. The Socialist City of Lakewood Democrats have already has duplicated enough health programs that are available through the county.

Let’s get serious, the healthcare availability in the City of Lakewood sucks and all the Democrat horses and all the Democrat men can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I noted a comment about the Trump Administration. in comparison may I suggest they look at the economy and worry about how their political party representatives put the City of Lakewood in its current situation with strip malls instead of a hospital. The City of Lakewood is landlocked and the only avenue of growth is higher density that will strain the available green space, parking and traffic.

Mark Kindt wrote:
I am an old-fashioned Democrat articulating concerns about the elected local officials of my own party who should stand for something completely different than what they have delivered.

As I outlined in a previous piece, your Lakewood Democrats behave the same as my Arizona Republicans. Regressive policies, cutting services, privatizing, stripping public assets, creating inequality. The Arizona Republicans are the gold-standard real thing, shamelessly bought and paid-for by the libertarian Koch Network. Arizona is a proving grounds for this virulent stream of (lack of) civic behavior.

If Arizona politicians are the real thing, and Lakewood Dems have the same behavior, that suggests there is a different controlling factor than political party. I say that the controlling factor is corporate fascism and the personal greed of (too many of) those who seek public office. Arizona politicians are under the sway of the libertarians and corporatists. Lakewood, the hospital and its public policies, were and are doomed by the corporate and political stripping of public assets for private gain. That's your CCF and your Three Arches Foundation populated by an opportunistic cabal of alleged city/ civic leaders. In his efforts, Summers behaves like a (corporate) "Republican" which has always been his party affiliation. He's a (faux) "Democrat" as the only avenue to get elected in NE Ohio and thus serve the agenda of his owners.

Richard Baker wrote:Are you suggesting the Socialist City of Lakewood provide health insurance to 5,000 uninsured residence? Ever hear of Obamacare, the bill that Democrats had to pass to understand and their answer to providing insurance to all those people that couldn’t afford private coverage? You know, the AHC program, that we were told we could keep our doctors, our policies and premiums would not go up, it is the same program that that few can afford the premiums due to the cost. Let’s examine the real coverage the AHC program expanded and that was Medicare. The bill almost doubled the maximum earnings for people to qualify for coverage or you can renounce your citizenship and get immediate coverage like illegal aliens.

According to the census Lakewood has 9.3 percent of the population without health insurance or about 4, 847 people. The majority are probably the young and health that don’t feel the need for coverage if their employee doesn’t provide it, or those who have not signed up for Medicare not needing it or in some cases a family that earnings exceed the maximum allowable income to qualify for Medicare. The Socialist City of Lakewood Democrats have already has duplicated enough health programs that are available through the county.

Let’s get serious, the healthcare availability in the City of Lakewood sucks and all the Democrat horses and all the Democrat men can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I noted a comment about the Trump Administration. in comparison may I suggest they look at the economy and worry about how their political party representatives put the City of Lakewood in its current situation with strip malls instead of a hospital. The City of Lakewood is landlocked and the only avenue of growth is higher density that will strain the available green space, parking and traffic.

I feel like you are arguing with a straw man. Why don't you put your thoughts into a new and different thread, a "Critique of Lakewood Democrats" and maybe you'll stir some debate?

This Is The Debate

While I may often disagree with Mr. Baker, Mr, Mager, and Mr. Alaimo, this IS the debate that we need to have about the future of Lakewood.

Many of us have documented poor public policy outcomes that effect all residents and taxpayers.

Those poor public policy outcomes seem to indicate some future trends.

Some of those future trends might require higher local taxation or higher bonded indebtedness or public subsidies to private corporations.

This is all fair game for discussion and debate.

I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to express it.

I believe that current public policy choices will decrease affordability for current residents to maintain residence in their chosen community.

If you see different trends, I would like to hear the arguments and look at the data that supports the position.