Pittsburgh protesters say: ‘Save Braddock Hospital’

Undaunted by pouring rain, hundreds of community residents, students and United Steelworker union retirees in Pittsburgh blocked the street in front of the Braddock hospital on Nov. 19 to declare that the struggle to keep the facility open was only the beginning.

WW photo: Cheryl LaBash

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center slated the closing of the 103-year-old hospital as it began construction on a $250 million hospital in Monroeville, Pa., adjacent to a competing hospital in a more economically upscale area. UPMC’s decision to close Braddock as of Jan. 31, 2010, takes place during the nationwide fight to win health care for all against the interests of insurance companies, pharmaceutical giants and health care behemoths like UPMC, all of whom are determined to keep their profit margins growing.

Both single-payer universal health care organizers and the Steelworkers union see the fight to keep UPMC Braddock hospital open as a front line in the fight for quality, accessible and affordable health care for all.

Steelworkers International Vice-President Fred Redmond spoke from the back of the flatbed-truck stage. He said, “UPMC has made a unilateral decision to remove this hospital from this community—take away trauma care, take away prenatal care, take away care from the people who need it the most. This is a broken system. ... We are going to do everything that is humanly possible to try to change the mind of this multinational corporation, UPMC—a billion dollar corporation, a corporation that has made a decision to close this hospital based on profit as opposed to people. ... Let’s remain focused to see to it that the people of Braddock have a health care facility that they can rely on. That the people in Braddock are not second class citizens and the UPMC puts back the money into the community that has made them rich over the years by keeping this hospital open.”

Other speakers included the current USW local president from the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, whose smokestacks loom just a couple of blocks from the hospital. He pointed out that the nearby emergency room at UPMC Braddock means life or death for any worker suffering an industrial accident at the mill.

Speakers echoed the many signs held by protesters noting that UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff pulls down $4.45 million per year heading the nonprofit—thus tax exempt—medical giant attempting to pull the plug on UPMC Braddock.

In what would challenge the general view of what not-for-profit means, the UPMC Web site describes itself this way: “UPMC is an $8 billion integrated global health enterprise headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and one of the leading nonprofit health systems in the United States. As western Pennsylvania’s largest employer, with 50,000 employees, UPMC is transforming the economy of the region into one based on medicine, research and technology. By integrating 20 hospitals, 400 doctors’ offices and outpatient sites, long-term care facilities and a major health insurance services division, and in collaboration with its academic partner, the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, UPMC has advanced the quality and efficiency of health care and developed internationally renowned programs in transplantation, cancer, neurosurgery, psychiatry, orthopedics, and sports medicine, among others. UPMC is commercializing its medical and technological expertise by nurturing new companies, developing strategic business relationships with some of the world’s leading multinational corporations and expanding into international markets, including Italy, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Cyprus, and Qatar.”

Braddock is a small, very poor town along the banks of the Monongahela River, adjacent to Pittsburgh and the home of Carnegie’s first mill, now with fewer than 3,000 residents, down from its peak of 20,000. Similar small communities like Rankin, Wilkinsburg, Homestead and McKeesport, broken by the destruction of the area’s steel jobs, now receive refugees from Pittsburgh’s much lauded rebirth, which is being effected through the gentrification of primarily African-American neighborhoods in the Hill District and the Northside, where sports stadiums gleam.

Already the Wilkinsburg City Council has unanimously voted to support the fight to keep UPMC Braddock open, pointing out that Wilkinsburg has no emergency room. Braddock Mayor Fetterman reported that officials in Turtle Creek, North Braddock, Munhall, Rankin, Forest Hills, Homestead, West Homestead and Swissvale are supporting the campaign, which will include petitioning in Pittsburgh and protests at UPMC headquarters and its CEO’s personal residence as well as possible legal action.