Keep Sarasota Memorial PUBLIC and Outfox the Fox!
Keep Sarasota Memorial Out of the Hands of
Big Corporations
1: Melody shared at the November, 2022 hospital board meeting how devastated her family was by Sarasota Memorial Hospital's treatment. After she secured an attorney, the hospital finally let her husband have a few doses off-label of an FDA-approved medicine. It was working beautifully, but she said the hospital denied further timely doses and he died. Sarasota Memorial Hospital reviewed his case and inexplicably said it still meets their "Standard of Care."
2: During the incumbants' time on the board, the time allowed for a member of the public to speak before the board went from 60 minutes per year to 18 minutes per year.
Dr. Stephen Guffanti and Dr. Tamzin Rosenwasser have advocated locally and nationally about the need to fix specific problems that resulted in poor patient care: including loss of informed consent and bureaucratic interference with the patient-doctor relationship.
The Cover-Up Candidates have not acknowledged specific problems that still need to be fixed at Sarasota Memorial to keep patients safe, even though families have addressed the board saying their loved ones died unnecessarily at Sarasota Memorial Hospital for lack of adequate care.
3. A Uniparty PAC is propping up establishment candidates. It encourages Democrats to crash the Republican primary: "If you are not a Republican, you can change your affiliation easily HERE. NOTE deadline for changing affiliation is July 22. You can change your affiliation back after the primary."
LIKE TAKING CANDY FROM A BABY?
Taking the largest Public Hospital System Away from the People
Shouldn’t Be as Easy as Taking Candy from a Baby.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital is on track to be the Last Truly Public Hospital Left Standing in Florida: with a Publicly-Elected Hospital Board, Funded in Part by Local Public Taxpayer Dollars, and Publicly Owned.
That's because Lee Health's publicly-elected hospital board (the only other publicly-elected hospital board beside Sarasota Memorial in all of Florida) just voted in June, 2024 to allow their public hospital system to get taken away from the public, and become a private corporation, where it will answer to shareholders, and not the community.
Why did the Hospital Corporation of America, that owns over 150 hospitals nationwide, send multiple lobbyists to talk to Florida politicians about the bill that paved the way to privatize Lee Health, Florida's LARGEST public system?
Why did the bill sail through all three Florida legislative committees, the House, and the Senate, WITHOUT A SINGLE OPPOSING VOTE?!
Why is Lee County not even getting the chance to prevent the loss of their public hospital system with a referendum?
AND WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SARASOTA MEMORIAL?
It means that if the community of Lee County does not find a way to convince their County Commissioners to Say No to Greedy Corporations and Keep their Public Hospitals in the Public's Hands, Lee County, the largest public hospital system in Florida, and the only Florida hospital besides Sarasota Memorial Hospital to have a publicly-elected hospital board, will fall to private interests.