yo i am probably going to need a surgery and I noticed I was referred to a religious hospital by default and am not sure what to do about it. I haven’t gone there yet. I don’t know if I should just ignore that religiousness of it. I was kind of shocked to get a letter in the mail addressed to me with a big ol cross on the envelope.
how do you feel about hospitals (and other health care organizations) that have some tie to religion? I guess a lot of them used to be totally run by churches or whatever but have become somewhat secularized over time. now they get funding from taxes, non profits, insurance companies or whatever.
In my experience it is usually catholic with other christian denominations showing up and many major cities having at least one jewish hospital.
In terms of the anglosphere are there any other religions that have hospitals? I have never heard of a muslim, hindu or buddhist hospital in “the west” though these of course exist elsewhere. do they exist in the US? has anyone ever tried to start one?
In terms of your own (or your family’s care)
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do you judge them on their own merits?
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Prefer/boycott them compared to others?
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LGBTQ+++ people: do you trust them?
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women: do you trust them? if you were choosing to carry a pregnancy would you have doubts about going to such a place when the time came?
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religious people: do you trust the ones of other religions? or your own?
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atheists: do you trust them?
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indigenous people: do you trust them?
What kind of hiring practices do these places have? I remember hearing about Salvation Army being anti-queer in hiring. Are they generally allowed to discriminate in accordance of their religious bigotries?
Any other general political ideas too.
Is there any reason these places should be allowed to exist?
As long as you’re not doing a type of healthcare they have deranged superstitions about they can be fine. My mom got very good and effective brain cancer treatment from a hospital named for a papist saint.
I’m Catholic, I’ve been treated at Episcopal hospitals in my country, had family treated in hospitals from all kinds of Protestant churches. It’s just not really a consideration at all, AFAIK the staff are all pretty much from random backgrounds and are unlikely to reinforce any bias that the founders may have had when the hospitals were founded a century ago. I think you probably could be skeptical if you were going there for an abortion or trans healthcare, but otherwise it’s not a concern at all.
Edit: with regards to whether they should be allowed to exist: I think not, all healthcare should be nationalized of course. But it wouldn’t hurt to keep some part of it as a cultural relic if we’re talking about the more relatively benign institutions, the ones that have been involved in indigenous genocide should definitely become entirely secularized and scrubbed clean of any ties to remaining religious institutions that were linked to the genocides.
Been going to see my mom in a heavily Catholic-coded hospital. I highly doubt that many people working in the place are themselves Catholic. I also trust that they would not refuse to perform a procedure that contradicts Catholic faith.
The only reason I’m fine with existing hospitals being Judeo-Christian-coded is that hospitals as we understand them in The West have their origins in the Christian church and newer hospitals tend to lack this coding. Just today, I was wandering through the halls and stumbled across the “spiritual healing room” which contained…how do I put it? Artifacts? Icons?..of multiple non-western faiths.
I guess in the end, whether you profess a religion or not, humans have spiritual needs. Somebody going through the sort of thing that requires visiting a hospital is likely to have greater spiritual needs.
I stayed at a hospital that had “Resurrection” in its name, but that was not a service they provided.
There was an article a while back about hospitals run by Catholic organizations that would ban doctors from offering services that violate religious rules (i.e. abortion and contraception), even if the doctors do not personally hold those beliefs. While it’s probably not the case with all Catholic-coded hospitals, it’s still something to be aware of. They may also pressure non-Catholic hospitals into accepting these rules as they formed mergers with them, so it’s a potential issue even for hospitals that don’t seem like it.
I have never heard of a muslim, hindu or buddhist hospital in “the west” though these of course exist elsewhere.
Jewish hospitals in the US were founded in large part because many other hospitals would refuse to employ Jewish doctors or treat Jewish patients in the past. I would imagine that there aren’t hospitals specifically for other religions in the US because they are an even smaller minority and there hasn’t been an explicit need to the same extent.
There was an article
Today, one in every six hospital beds nationwide are subject to Catholic restrictions, which prohibit doctors from prescribing birth control pills, implanting IUDs, distributing condoms, administering fertility treatments, or performing sterilizations.
wow that is wild; the situation is worse than I knew.
doctors shouldn’t even be allowed to practice in such facilities. doesn’t it put their licenses at risk? they should be able to give the best advise in accordance with current practice then carry out said advice if the patient agrees.
i have learned that there are HIV treatment clinics running out of catholic hospitals and you have to wonder what that even means. is it a crypto palliative care unit (ala mother teresa) or conversion therapy? what do they do there?
