May 7 2010
The Associated Press/Boston Herald: Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is pledging to hold public hearings on a proposed sale of a chain of Catholic Hospitals there to a private equity firm. "Coakley said Caritas Christi Health System today filed a formal notice of the proposed transfer of the system to Steward Health Care System LLC, an affiliate of New York-based Cerberus Capital Management." The Catholic hospital system proposed for sale is the second largest chain in Massachusetts, and hearings on the sale will be held in each of the communities the sale would affect (5/6).
The Boston Globe: Coakley must review the deal by law before it is considered for approval by the state Department of Public Health and the Supreme Judicial Court. "Today's filing includes a stewardship agreement negotiated by the Archdiocese of Boston with Cerberus and Caritas outlining how the Catholic identity of the hospitals will be maintained, and under what conditions it may be terminated." The agreement sates that the hospitals will maintain the ethical directives for Catholic services that are set forth by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "The directives provide extensive guidance about how care is to be administered according to Catholic teachings — among other things, prioritizing care for the poor, respecting human life from conception until natural death, and forbidding certain procedures, such as abortions and vasectomies" (Wangsness, 5/6).
 This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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