As any Blue Ivy will tell you, the growing gap between the rich and poor is increasingly seen in the swanky wings of the city's hospitals. At Mount Sinai, if a patient staying in one of the $1,600-night suites wants something other than Jello or creamed corn, the staff obliges. "If they have a craving for lobster tails and we don't have them on the menu, we'll go out and get them," the hospital's hospitality manager tells the Times. At the "Greenberg 14 South" wing of NewYork-Presbyterian, patients paying $2,400 a night have butlers. No word on whether the suppositories are made with gold leaf.
Fueling the boom of luxury hospital suites are rich medical tourists from other countries who often pay in cash, as opposed to the rest of us sick fiends who have to use insurance. "It’s not just competing on medical grounds and specialties, but competing for customers who can go just about anywhere,” one of the designers of Greenberg 14 South says. “Theoretically, it trickles down.” Hmm, where have we heard that before?
The article reminds us that hospitals used to be free in the 19th century, and when they began charging fees were called "hotels for rich invalids." David Rosner, a professor of public health at Columbia, explains the hospitals' dilemma: “Today, they pride themselves on attracting private patients, and on the other hand ask for our tax dollars based upon their older charitable mission." Rosner recalls that one of his graduate students who couldn't pay in cash for a ridiculously expensive room languished on a gurney in the ER for two days with herniated disks. "She hadn't even been give a bed pan." Sounds like someone should have become a venture capitalist before getting injured!
