NJ hospitals face crisis

If the country is facing a nationwide health-care crisis, then the condition in New Jersey can be described as gravely critical. The state has an estimated 1.3 million people without health insurance who cannot pay a doctor or a hospital bill. New Jersey law requires that hospitals treat anyone who walks through their doors, and then get reimbursed later by the state. But the state's looming budget shortfall has forced it to cut back on the reimbursements, leaving hospitals to pick up the tab. And hospitals, in turn, are going broke: Six have closed in the past 18 months, and half of those remaining are operating in the red. Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center is slated to become the latest casualty of this faltering system, closing its acute-care facility later this year. "I don't think people know what will happen if Muhlenberg closes -- there will be a lot of deaths," said Jeanne Smith, whose husband, Thomas Smith, is paraplegic, needs dialysis and suffers from a variety of illnesses. Thomas Smith, 77, has been in and out of Muhlenberg a half-dozen times in the past year. "My husband probably would have died if Muhlenberg wasn't five minutes away," she said. Muhlenberg blames the huge growth in uninsured patients, the underfunding of Medicaid and Medicare and the state's budget cuts for charity care. "The healthcare system in New Jersey is clearly broken," Muhlenberg says on its website. "And hospitals that serve a high percentage of poor and uninsured cannot survive under these pressures." Almost everyone agrees that a key underlying problem is the lack of universal health insurance. "We need to have universal health care -- we really, really do," said Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs, who said she has been frantically seeking a buyer for Muhlenberg. "The hospitals that close are generally in urban areas with minority people living there, and they don't count politically," said the Rev. James Colvin, who has also been active in trying to save Muhlenberg or find a new buyer. "From a 'survival of the fittest' standpoint, it makes sense. We're saying it smacks of the final solution for urban centers. Someone else called it 'genocide lite.' "