Northwest Indiana Discussion

I'm interested to hear what people think about Porter Memorial's latest moves - closing the OB department in Portage and asking the County Commissioners to declare a two year moratorium on any new medical building in the county so that they can study this.

Now that I have asked for opinions - I'll give mine lol

Lots of people think that having a county owned hospital is a good thing. I have to believe that they think that this will provide better care to the citizens of Porter County. As a resident of Chesterton, I think the timing really stinks. The LakeShore Bone and Joint is just getting ready to break ground on an addition. This will bring more great jobs and tax revenue to the town, things we desperately need. It will also continue to bring quality health care to the whole area. I've heard that the leadership of Porter Memorial is trying to do everything it can to upset the doctors there. They are hiring two ortho docs from Illinois to come here and then they want to stop building right when the LakeShore docs are ready to break ground. I have heard that Porter Memorial is spending over a million bucks to bring these docs in.

They are closing the OB department of Portage and moving everything to Valpo. They are bringing Ortho docs to Valpo to upset the docs in Chesterton. The motion to set up this moratorium was made by the former Mayor of Valpo. It seems to me that the Valpo powers want to maintain everything in Valpo. The heck with everywhere else.

Sorry but I can't agree. If the reason to have a county hospital is to maintain great care for the residents of the county, then it should do that. If the reason to have a county hospital is to create a monopoly, then that won't maintain or bring quality care here. Monopolies don't have competition - that means there is no incentive to drive down costs, no incentive to push hard to do the best job possible. NIPSCO is a monopoly - enough said.

Call me silly, but I want the best health care I can get at the best price I can. A county hospital monopoly doesn't seem to do that.

I have great respect for all of the people who work at Porter Memorial - they are great people and I think they are trying to do a great job. It just appears that the management is misguided. Too bad the questions about Porter Memorial continue to be surrounded by politics - partisan politics sometimes gets in the way of asking questions and getting answers.

Have a great day!

It is really??

I got just three words to start this out... Cook County Hospital!

OMG County ran hospitals are the worse hospitals I have ever been to. Wait time at Cook county Hosp. is 15 hours useually and on a good day you can wait 13 hours to be seen.

I went to Cook County Hospital with a calapsed lung and fractured ribs. Not only that but I also had a torn deltiod ligament in my right foot. These were football injuries at Job Corps. Well I waited 16 hours to be seen by a doc. It was the worst experiance I ever had.

Governments are not suppose to run business's they are there to provide protection for your rights against others and for a select few other purposes only. County hospitals will always be substandard and packed because anyone in the county can come there to get treatment for free or low cost.

Lets get rid of these illegal aliens that are taking are skilled and unskilled jobs so americans can take them and have money to pay for healthcare.

I would welcome any competition. During my '05 open enrollment, I switched to St. Anthony's because I couldn't tolerate the continuous mistakes being made by the people who handle Porter's billing. My son was born at Porter; I was still receiving erroneous bills regarding his birth when he was over 1 year old!