Hospital Wars

There's a battle going on between two hospitals in Huntsville to determine which one will be able to place a 60 bed facility in the nearby city of Madison.

Huntsville and Crestwood Hospital both want to build hospitals in Madison. Only one will be able to. They've been in this fight for more than five years.

Madison needs a hospital. It isn't a small town and it's growing. Fast. Depending on where you live in Madison, the closest hospital can be anywhere from 20-30 minutes away. Maybe longer.

Standing in the way and preventing a hospital from being built now is the Alabama state government. A judge is going to have to make a recommendation to the state's 'Certificate of Need Board' to determine who wins the rights to build a hospital in Madison.

Put that on the back burner for just a second.

Not long ago I was in Madison with Mrs. Knight shopping for a new refrigerator. We didn't see what we liked at one home improvement store, so we left and went to another where we finally got our refrigerator. I'm glad there are at least two home improvement stores in Madison because it would have been inconvenient to travel 20 minutes in another direction to search for a refrigerator.

Later that day we stopped to get lunch. Thankfully there are dozens of restaurants in Madison to choose from. If you want mexican, there are mexican restaurants. If you want pizza, burgers or sandwiches... Madison offers it.

We do our grocery shopping in Madison as well. If we weren't satisfied with where we get our groceries, there are at least three other businesses that could possibly meet our needs.

Had there only been one home improvement store in Madison, we would have had to have either bought our refrigerator there our make a journey elsewhere to get it. I'm also glad that we had so many choices as to where we could eat, too. If there were only mexican restaurants in Madison and we wanted a pizza, we wouldn't have been able to do it in Madison.

That's the beauty of capitalism. It creates competition, lowers prices and everyone benefits.
Businesses have to compete for your business! If they can't or don't, they'll close shop.

The same holds true for hospitals. They have to work for your business as well and part of that includes getting the best doctors, surgeons and nurses. If you have a choice between hospital A or hospital B, you can choose what's best for you and your family. But if there's only one hospital, you're stuck with it no matter what.

Some argue that because having a hospital is so important, it's too risky to allow more than one because one could possibly close. But that's the reason it's so important to be able to choose which one you'll use! People don't want below par service when it comes to their health. Competing hospitals is the rising tide that lifts all boats!

Unfortunately, only one hospital is going to be allowed to build in Madison and the citizens will be stuck with whatever the state chooses. But why does the state government get to choose? The state certainly didn't determine which hardware store or restaurant won the right to open shop in Madison! If Madison is such a growing city that's big enough to support hundreds of businesses, why not allow multiple hospitals to open and serve the public as well?

Government restricts our choices under the guise of what's best for us. We pay the price.

The citizens of Madison have been paying that price for more than five years.