Great Read - Letter To Cleveland Mayor and Council

[Jim O'Bryan]

From a Facebook Post

Eric Jonathan Brewer is with Blaine Griffin and 3 others.


Frank. Council.

This "metro" lunacy has to come to an end. We need 5 emergency rooms inside the city of Cleveland and the "city hospital" is now regional and opening in Parma, Cleveland Heights and Medina. This is bullshit. Cleveland taxpayers shouldn't be funding this silliness.

MetroHealth was Cleveland's "city hospital" until 1957. Hospital services were free and low cost to the city's residents. We paid a $1 property tax for every $1000 in a property's value. $50 a year on a $50,000 home. The hospital employees were city workers. The city's purchasing department bought medical supplies and equipment. Doctors, not EMS techs, made house calls to our homes. We were treated in our homes. Wages were within the range of municipal workers who just happened to be medical personnel.

We were fine until 1957 and Mayor Anthony Celebreeze. Celebreeze hadn't studied the work of Mayors Harold Burton and Frank Lausche as they elevated between them from city hall to the U.S. Senate, to the Governor of Ohio to the Supreme Court of the United States.

We got the "Hill-Burton Act" from Mayor Burton while he served in the U.S. Senate in 1947. It was a law to fund free hospitals. Under Lausche as governor we got R.C. 749.01. The "Hill-Burton" funded hospitals were supposed to be free forever. But since politicians who followed didn't understand the law, mob hospitals like Cleveland Clinic bought up Hill-Burton hospitals like all those that used to exist in damn near every neighborhood and closed or demolished them. Look at Huron Hospital. With the Hill-Burton hospitals wiped out; we're now stuck with the current corporate profit-driven model until we, again, start using this October 1, 1953 law that's never been repealed.

749.01 Legislative authority may levy tax to compensate free public hospital. The legislative authority of each municipal corporation, annually, may levy and collect a tax not to exceed one mill on each dollar of the taxable property of the municipal corporation and pay the amount to a private corporation or association which maintains and furnishes a free public hospital for the benefit of the inhabitants of the municipal corporation, or not free except to such inhabitants as, in the opinion of a majority of the trustees of such hospital, are unable to pay. Such payment shall be compensation for the use and maintenance of such hospital. Without change or interference in the organization of such corporation or association, the legislative authority shall require the treasurer of such hospital, annually, to make a financial report setting forth all of the money and property which has come into its hands during the preceding year and the disposition thereof, together with any recommendations as to the future necessities of such hospital. Effective Date: 10-01-1953.

Celebreeze let the city hospital become a county hospital and Cleveland's been fucked ever since. The building belongs to the city of Cleveland unless it was stupidly sold. "Metro" can lease some other property someplace else if they want to get into that "regionalism" shit. Cleveland taxpayers, however, should not be funding it. We should be using our money to fund free and low cost medical care to Cleveland residents; and if the folk in Cleveland Heights, Parma and Medina want to use our money for their benefit they can move their asses to Cleveland.

We need to take our shit back; and start focusing on "home." We have plenty of empty homes and lots to fill and build on; but we've got to think about ourselves ... first.

Regionalism is not good for the residents of Cleveland who have and "had" the best shit. Why do you think everybody else wanted it? Take it all back.

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