Regarding the May 19 article "Hospital rivals go to the mat": This continuing Raleigh medical antagonism is intriguing, especially in view of the article in the May 18 Journal of the American Medical Association elucidating "Factors Associated with ER Closings" in urban hospital-based emergency departments. The chief driver seems to be the high cost of uncompensated care to the hospital system's bottom line, a fact that WakeMed's Bill Atkinson has not been reticent to publicly point out on numerous occasions.
There has historically been a town-gown schism between the inside the Beltline blueblood Rex and the outside the Beltline blue-collar Wake Memorial (now WakeMed), which apparently continues in that Atkinson points to the fact that Rex has not met its community obligation to take on its fair share of indigent uncompensated care.
It begs two questions: Is Wake's bid to purchase Rex then really a solution to this financial health care delivery quandary? And as the revolution in health care provision continues, is this not simply the next step toward a single-payer system?
