hello welcome to moral politics produced by bill offered i'm your host valerie to rico a year ago moral politics hosted again monica harrington of catholic watch dot org who came in to talk with us about h hospital murders across washington state in which thank you were system were being absorbed by catholic system the countable to the will of the bishop for example swedish hospital at that time had recently been absorbed by the providence system and  become a subsidiary of providence the university of washington was proposing an affiliation with east health also a catholic system and in the san juan islands peace health had obtained government subsidies to provide the only care decisions in that community across the state in fact many communities only have religiously controlled health care system and the change is continuing apace here with us today again is monica  harrington to talk about what's happened in the intervening time thank you for joining us thanks for having me out so what is the what is the scoop at this point what's going on with these catholic health care manager the university of washington has entered into a partnership with t has been acquiring hospitals that acquired high line it acquired harrison hospital in bremerton when you say conservative what do you mean by that well when i think of the catholic system i think in terms religious directive just call them the vision rule and they follow those one hundred percent so no contraception system is a is a public institution for goodness sake when the taxpayers fund it one hundred percent how is this possible i know it's a policy to me that our public university and medical teaching system is now affiliated with a capital institution what are the implications of that there's a few implications one of them is that they are proposing to do joint clinical programs together joint teaching programs which means university of washington medical students will be training traffic ospital or the care that training they're already getting will be expanded in kappa capital so the question the question for me as a citizen of washington is i want science based medicine i want i want to know what the full range of medically appropriate scientifically appropriate interventions are if i'm suffering or if somebody in my family is suffering i don't want to think based medicine is the university of washington to be practicing based medicine well the university of washington says it isn't going to practice space based medicine but what they're doing is they're requiring or making their students study in catholic hospital do rotations in catholic hospitals where the bishops roll apply and it's just the powerlink because when you work in a system where religious rules dictate that care patients get you start to get a sense that that's ok and it's absolutely not ok and our public university system should not be used to support the expansion of catholic health care what you're saying is that medical trainees have been too weighted it to a limited range of services catholic bishops have opposed them cell research they have opposed long long acting contraceptives which are the top tier for women they've opposed contraception being available to women who are delivering babies who want to be able to come out of the hospital with a contraceptive in place so what what i guess i wonder then is that we're talking about our medical trainees we should be cutting edge of best practices perhaps not getting enough for two meetings to witness or to experience or to practice those techniques themselves let me give you a very practical example i was down in the limb here earlier today and the a c l u described a situation where a patient with a pregnancy emergency went to a catholic hospital accompanied by her p and she was told that the procedure she needed the pregnancy needed to be terminated for medical reasons for health reasons she was told that she would have to wait until the ethics committee weighed in and approved the procedure that she needed and ethics committee but this is really a feel logically driven committee absolutely absolutely the ethics committees in catholic ospital operate by catholic role by the bishops role so what this means is that if you are a resident in a hospital that operates by those rules all of a sudden you're seeing a situation where it might seem ok that you have to wait for the ethical team to weigh in before a woman gets a procedure that she needs to save her life or her health that this is not standard medical ethics this is not a driven what i'm hearing is that the top priority is not necessarily the world of the patient the top priority is whether the medical care corresponds to a set of religious directives let's be clear the top priority for catholic health systems is to provide witness to the catholic faith patient care is subservient to that higher level mission of providing witness to the catholic faith how did they get in the health care service delivery you know business in the first place i know it's interesting because when you look that can you go back over one hundred years ago the men came out to the west and they opened up hospitals or health systems on the frontier and most of what they offered was nursing care they comforted people as they died or as they went through sicknesses and catholic health care was not different from the health care they might have gotten in a secular facility because at that point health care essentially right i mean people lived or died based on the will of god as they perceived it and maybe it's because they send or maybe just because god's will was inscrutable but but basically there wasn't medical science at that point and the other thing is the bishop had no involvement so and none who cared about science or who wanted to learn the best medical treatments are whenever she was free to do that because the bish overseeing health care that all changed in the twentieth century the bishops started to say hey we need to apply our rules whenever you talk about the catholic bishops what the association meant for me is that these are the same people who shuffle pedophile priests from parish to parish to parish right there i mean what that says to me is that these are people whose loyalty is first and foremost is not to the wellbeing of vulnerable people it's to the well being of the catholic institution and it's interesting it's important that you bring up the whole issue of abuse in the catholic church because i believe we're on the cusp of identifying patients that i think of as victims in the sense that they're being victimized by a system where they are not being given access to legal medically appropriate treatment and oftentimes they don't even know that it's happening it's just outrageous well people count on their doctor to tell them you know you have this choice or this choice they don't expect for the doctor to keep secret based on some kind of religious directives or religion you know they don't expect anyone to have a religious veto over their health care because if anybody's religion should come into it it's privilege in that the patient himself or herself right so there is an example recently where a woman needed a terminations of pregnancy terminations and  the catholic hospital the physicians at the catholic hospital they told her her pregnancy needed to be terminated but that was it they didn't tell her how that would happen they didn't arrange for her to go see a physician at a different facility so imagine if you went to a doctor and the doctor said you need a very serious knee operation now i really have no idea how that might happen or where you might go but you need a serious knee operation that's not bad arkell care we wouldn't allow it in any other facet of medicine but for some reason we're saying it's ok for women's reproductive health well again i come back to the idea that that science and patient rights and patient wellbeing kind of are what people expect when they come into the medical system and specially a university medical system so who would ever suspect that if you if you walk in the door of the university of washington or some place that the university of washington has endorsed as a partner that you might not be getting the full picture right and what we're seeing is that in the skagit area for example there are two hospitals that recently partnered affiliated with these have and they said publicly that one of the reasons that they're moving ahead with their partnership with the catholic organization is because the university of washington also partnered with that same catholic institution so the university of washington is being used as a shield to fuel the expansion of catholic health care and that's just outrageous that's not how our tax dollars should be used and the university of washington should be leading the fight to ensure that secular health care is available to everyone in washington state because the brand of the university of washington is state of the art right scientific full range of services is where you go where nobody else can take care of you right and no one else knows what to do when you've got something really complicated when when your home position will be at last when you need specialized medical technology news you expect that the university of washington is going to endorse the very best and i'm going to provide the very best right my own sister underwent melanoma treatment at the university of washington and it was high and treatment unfortunately she didn't make it but i know how strongly my sister felt about catholic institutions and she made it very clear she didn't want to go near a path institution and so it's really bothersome to so many people that the university of washington with essentially let its guard down and basically say we're going to abandon our principles where medicine should be completely rooted in science because it's c d n are asked to do a deal with the catholic institutions that just shouldn't be allowed what the doctors at the university of washington think about this whole notion of faith based medicine on their own home turf yet it's crazy a few months ago i was in a meeting where  around the state including from the university of washington from some catholic institutions and from other secular institution we were talking about the whole religion and health care issue and the people from the university of washington which included students and faculty where extremely bothered and they were especially bothers me ministration is not publicly answering questions and is not clearly addressing the conflict between the type of care that these faculty members and students believe they should be getting and what the requirements are at the south in terms of abiding by the bishops rules as we start talking about the role of the catholic church in washington health care  one of the questions that comes to mind her me is i think of this also in the context of national in there being a conversation in which religious privilege is being elevated and it's growing rapidly you know  and whether it's religious institutions or religious and individual many people are arguing and winning arguments in the courts that they shouldn't be subject to the obligations of civil society like providing contraceptive coverage comprehensive kind of coverage and in health care for their employees basically people are willing kansas for example recently they were you know on the law they're arguing that they should be subject to civil rights laws in fact there was an argument voted for same sex marriage and yet the catholic church just recently won the right to be completely exempt from washington's anti discrimination law when it comes to couples in same sex marriages or gay people there's no protection for somebody who works in a catholic hospital and who is in any way involved in furthering their religious mission there's no protection for that person from being fired and as we've seen the catholic bishop in seattle is perfectly happy to dismiss same sex married people who work for catholic institutions well i just happened to at the to the vice principal at eastside catholic right right and it made news national news international news and so it made international news because the kids fought back right right and so the question is why aren't people fighting back more and a huge part of this is that people have a hard time really grasping how horrendous it is that we have allowed three catholic bishops to take control of employment and health care policy for almost half our health care system the church going to court for the right to discriminate i mean people think of the church of providing morals spiritual ethical leadership you know in the civil rights movement there was there  was a lot of religious leaders who were out in front willing to put their well being on the line with their reputations on the line and so the thought again of like the church taking it all that all the way up through the court system because they want the right to discriminate yeah it's really twisted i know it's really it's really just so appalling and it's not the catholic church that my parents supported they supported a version of the catholic church that was much more compassionate and the idea that the catholic church went out of its way to win the right to fire people that disagree with that philosophy it's just outrageous well it reminds me of evangelicals right i mean we have  world vision based in federal way that went all the way to the supreme court of the united states and won the right to discriminate based on religion right because they argued that they couldn't fulfill their christian mission if there was be a logical diversity among their their warehouse workers i think it's so disturbing that for everybody who works in health care today in washington state that if half the employment opportunities are with the system that refuses to acknowledge same sex marriages that has views that people who find themselves pregnant and i'm married are sinful and should be fired and in fact the catholic church has fired people from catholic institutions that happened just recently again they had actual news right what was the story it did so there was a middle school teacher a single woman who was pregnant and her employer catholic a catholic institution fired her and it's ironic because that's exactly the sort of behavior that going to drive somebody who needs to keep their job into having an abortion which they have disapprove of right there basically saying catch twenty two sorry you're outta luck right right and what's the other thing that is a little crazy making about this whole situation is the fact that most of these catholic institutions are not getting their money from the church from the offerings like they're getting their money from the taxpayer right as i understand it ninety five ninety eight percent of the money flowing through catholic social services actually comes from from past payers and in fact they have also one in court the right to say that if a religious institution isn't allowed to compete for social service grants and health care grants that they're being discriminated against this bizarre notion the catholic church says and some other ultra conservative leaders have this notion that religious freedom is all about having the right to impose your values on other people and so here in washington state we have a health care system that is paid for in large part by government makes up about forty five percent of the revenues broadly speaking and then you have the private employers who make up a huge percentage and then people who just pay for their own insurance coverage or who pay out of pocket so that's where the funding time from and all of these catholic systems operate at a surplus so the care that they provide is funded by all of us it's not coming from catholic specific coffers the other thing that is a myth about catholic health care is that they provide more charity care than other hospitals in fact catholic hospitals provide less charity care than the industry average and the a c l u the american civil liberties union and richard watch released a report in december of two thousand and thirteen itemizing that because i think most people would have no idea that catholic institutions actually provide less care that it's most than charitable at what's happened at fund family on the island where a catholic hospital that is directly subsidized by taxpayers has been open for more than a year the cost of health care up on c n n island has gone up dramatically now why did it go up because they built a gorgeous new facility with a combination of donated dollars and that facility per by the high end services but what's interesting is because it goes by catholic rules it doesn't so and that's just because they receive is to follow the state laws that voters enacted which could tax at the patient's right to make reproductive choices based upon their own conscience based upon their own feelings and what makes sense for their own family when you talk about the sound when islands i think of people who go there to retire and intend to send a child the last years of their lives and i know that the bishops rules profoundly affect the rights of patients to decide how to how in their lives right i mean to have a control over their dying process when the time comes the catholic church and the bishops forbid any participation in this death with dignity and exponentially if they put a noose around there a gag order on their doctors for the doctors are not allowed to discuss staff with dignity with patients origen refer them directly to compassion in theresa's which is that organization that helps people find a doctor who can help them exercise their rights under the law so you have religious directives that trump patient directive america act the catholic church is very upfront about this remark so outrageous i know your end of life directive will be honored as long as it doesn't conflict with catholic doctrine and so we had to get married having a religious veto right right and the consequences can be horrifying so down in the vancouver area a patient who was terminal in a great deal of pain and wanted to exercise his rights under the death of dignity law couldn't find a physician who was able to help in the reason is that the south has expanded dramatically down in that cooper area and they are the big health care providers and there's chilling effect when they think none of our physicians will participate in desperate dignity and so this patient unfortunately took his own life by shooting himself now that's the sort of thing that we enact lot to prevent we want people to be able to choose a peaceful death if they're facing a painful terminal illness i know the new york times just had an article last week about the whole notion of death with dignity or aid in dying and they talked about a colorado man who is facing the same pitch and it can't doesn't have the right to manage his own dying process and the this whole nobody should have to themselves nobody should have to shoot them to her random violent way to have to die when somebody is simply wanting to be able to manage the level of pain the the all of all of everything that goes along with that at the end of life there's a chilling effect for doctors if you know that your employer that you're catholic employer refuses to allow abortion or birth control or any participat also want to get a paycheck i think it goes back to what you're talking about at the university of washington you know doctors do what they're familiar with and they do with their colleagues do they deal with what has been millions of them thinking what they have experience and not and and if you have people coming through the training system as residents as nurses in training and they're never exposed to conversations about what it means for a person to be able to have a good guy going to manage their own dying process they're not exposed  to care that isn't restricted but the important thing is that they should not be training in facilities where the rules are staffed by three catholic bishops it's just untenable and it's really important that the region and medicine of washington state make clear that we don't want our public university system and the teaching medical hospital not just for this state but for several states in the area to be influenced or under the direction of catholic position that abide by catholic school or any systems that are being subjected to that right there is a question of autonomy for the physicians completely contrary to the medical procedures and standards that have been set up by the american congress of obstetricians and gynecologists so the o b g y n and about ninety five percent of the long acting reversible contraceptives what we call the top tier of contraceptive and they believe strongly that all options should be available to women patients who might face a pregnancy and especially a pregnancy that runs into complications and so the question is how can all be two why and who are restricted from doing the very things that the professional body says are critical providing women's health care services how can they be licensed as o b g y n in this state when they are restricted because of the bishop's rules from providing contraception providing abortion time i know that the people of washington state want to be in charge of their own health and that as a region we think of ourselves as being science driven we're evidence based one of the out in front not dragging behind we can't afford to have our healthcare anchored to believe that come down an entire thank you very much thank you