No taxpayer-financed bailout for sick hospital!

Disastrous, costly policy proposals often center around government picking winners and losers rather than the time-honored and historically proven approach of allowing the marketplace to determine which enterprises succeed and fail.

After its parent company announced plans to close downtown Louisville’s Jewish Hospital, which has hemorrhaged financially for years, the University of Louisville stepped in to purchase this "too-big-to-fail" aging health care facility but originally claimed they needed a $50 million "partially forgivable" loan from taxpayers to complete the purchase. Now, they say taxpayers need to fork over “only” $35 million.

The Bevin administration and legislative leaders unconstitutionally agreed to the public expenditure before the legislature could even meet and debate the matter. Bluegrass Institute president and CEO Jim Waters passionately argues – including in his prepared (brief) comments here – against using taxpayer dollars to bail out this failing hospital during a recent debate at the Louisville Forum. The other panelists, U of L Health CEO Tom Miller and then-Health and Family Cabinet Secretary Adam Meier of the Bevin administration, spoke in support of this ill-advised spending proposal.

View the full debate.