To The Editor:
In evaluating the University Hospital proposal, the public — and critics — should address these basic concerns:
• John Dempsey Hospital is rapidly nearing the end of its useful life. What is to be done? Other hospitals do not want responsibility for medical services to the Department of Corrections, nor responsibility for psychiatric and neonatal patients. Nearly half of Dempsey’s beds are restricted to specialized care, care no other hospital wants or is able to assume. And what fate awaits the UConn Medical and Dental Schools without Dempsey as anchor for instructional and clinical programs? There is no alternative to replacing Dempsey.
• The $500 million investment in taxpayer money for a new Dempsey Hospital is avoidable only at the cost of degrading or even closing UConn’s Medical and Dental Schools, a devastating blow to the quality and accessibility of health care in Connecticut. And — contrary to what some assert — this investment is strictly for a publicly owned hospital, even if the University Hospital initiative with Hartford Hospital goes forward.
• Critics have fundamentally misrepresented the costs of this initiative. OPM made a stunning error in calculating bonding costs, using an interest rate of more than 10 percent. Connecticut currently sells general obligation bonds at 3.9 percent interest; OPM overstated bonding costs threefold! OPM failed to factor in the growing cost of covering Dempsey’s deficits. Far more important, evaluating implications of replacing Dempsey and creating the University Hospital demands consideration of benefits. The Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis provided a detailed, transparent dynamic economic impact analysis of each element of UConn’s approach to building a world-class health sciences complex. No one — not OPM, not Saint Francis Hospital, not any critic — has offered criticism of that analysis. That analysis shows graphically that the University Hospital Partnership generates dramatic benefits in quality jobs, in new tax revenue — far beyond all costs of bonding and the fringe benefit differential — and in economic growth.
The state must replace Dempsey Hospital. That is clear. But that is not the challenge. The challenge is this: What will be the engine for economic vitality in central Connecticut over the next 20 years? There is only one proposal on the table.
Fred Carstensen
Director
Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis
