Healthcare Profiteering Hurts Workers and Patients:
Put People First Stands with Laid-Off Workers
at Chestnut Hill and Pottstown Hospitals
Join the fight for Healthcare as a Human Right with Put People First! PA
The Montgomery County Healthcare Rights Committee of Put People First! PA (PPF) stands with workers at Chestnut Hill and Pottstown Hospitals in the wake of Tower Health’s November 10th layoffs of over 70 clerical and intensive-patient care providers. The layoffs are part of an effort of “non-profit” Tower Health to maximize profits after its recent $50 million acquisition of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. PPF-PA believes that our lives and jobs as patients and workers shouldn’t be expendable in pursuit of a corporate bottom line.
Pottstown and Chestnut Hill were two of six hospitals swallowed up by the giant hospital corporation, Tower Health, in 2017. Tower’s 2018 buyout of St. Christopher’s from billionaire Joel Freedman’s healthcare megacorporation, American Academic Health System, brought the number to seven.
Corporate takeovers, closings and consolidations of hospitals are happening all over the country, devastating workers and patients alike. The problem is that healthcare is a business: the enormous incomes of owners, CEO’s and shareholders depend on excluding the maximum number of poor, sick, uninsured and under-insured people – as well as laying off workers and exploiting the remaining with reduced wages, unsafe conditions and increased workloads. We must ask, why do executives take home massive incomes, while necessary and critical jobs are eliminated? Why does our country not provide healthcare for all, like many other nations around the world? Because healthcare is not treated as a human right! The corporations do not see us, the poor and dispossessed of Pennsylvania, as dignified human beings worthy of care and secure, well-paid jobs. Put People First! PA denounces predatory healthcare profiteers like Tower Health and Joel Freedman. We will not get the jobs and healthcare we deserve without fighting together for it!
That is why Put People First! PA (PPF) is building a statewide grassroots movement of poor and dispossessed people who believe that healthcare is a human right. If you are personally affected by these layoffs as a patient or a worker, or are moved to fight for Healthcare as a Human Right, we want you to join us! We are uplifting our stories together, growing our statewide power and taking action together! Our Montgomery Country Healthcare Rights Committee (HRC) meets twice a month in Norristown. Join us!
To get involved, please contact:
Montgomery County Healthcare Rights Committee (HRC) of Put People First! PA: Co-coordinators:
Jacob Butterly: 215-908-4661, jsjb.cwrite@gmail.com Jen Cox: 215-906-4087, jenkwru@yahoo.com