Fetterman rekindles on-and-off dispute with UPMC
Braddock Hospital was shuttered in 2009
John Fetterman has never been through a divorce, but the way he describes UPMC’s 2009 closure of Braddock Hospital, on the main thoroughfare of the town in which he was then mayor, he may know how one feels.
“They just up and said, ‘This isn’t working anymore. We’re out of here,’” Mr. Fetterman recalled Friday. “I begged them, ‘Don’t leave. We need you.’”
On Thursday, when Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced he would take UPMC to court over allegations that it violated the state’s public charities law by restricting access to its doctors and medical facilities, Mr. Fetterman, now Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, was by his side, promising the “weight” of state government behind the effort.
But the weight of 2009 — and the lieutenant governor’s complicated relationship with the health care giant — also resurfaced this week. Mr. Fetterman tweeted sideby-side pictures from 10 years apart: a screenshot of a news article signifying UPMC Braddock’s closing, juxtaposed with a picture from Mr. Shapiro’s press conference of Mr. Fetterman surrounded by supporters of the prosecutor’s action.
“#10YearChallenge @UPMC 2009: UPMC Braddock Closes. 2019: Brought Friends,” the tweet read.
Like Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Fetterman accused the health system of not acting like a charitable organization in the termination of its longtime relationship with insurer Highmark. A UPMC spokesman on Thursday countered that in five years since the health system and the insurer began their divorce proceedings, businesses and consumers have had “substantial time to prepare.”
UPMC said in 2009 that it shuttered Braddock Hospital because of declining utilization by area residents — that four out of five Braddock residents were choosing other hospitals when they wanted treatment. UPMC also reported the facility had lost $9.5
million in the fiscal year ending June 2009 and $4.2 million the year before.
UPMC examined “opportunities to integrate and consolidate functions balanced against the needs of the community,” per a fact sheet issued by the health system in 2009. UPMC had no further comment Friday.
In 2010, Mr. Fetterman was arrested after refusing to leave the U.S. Steel Tower, where he held a sign urging UPMC to open an urgent care center in his town. At the time, he said he did it to start a “hopeful dialogue,” but he was criticized by some in the community who said he didn’t fight strong enough for the hospital until it was too late. Critics at the time also said that Mr. Fetterman was too close to Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, who was accused by some of putting his gubernatorial ambitions ahead of his concern for Braddock.
Mr. Fetterman said Friday that people incorrectly assume he has a grudge against UPMC, or is seeking revenge.
“I’m absolutely not. UPMC is the state’s largest employer,” Mr. Fetterman said. “Their employees are tremendous...It really comes down to this one issue of basic fairness.”
Though he denied any animus toward UPMC, Mr. Fetterman said he recalls the day he found out UPMC was closing Braddock Hospital as one that changed his life, and set off a “firestorm” in the community.
In TED Talks in the years following the hospital’s closing, Mr. Fetterman described it as “devastating” -- saying that even though he admired UPMC, it compounded the town’s misery of population loss and economic struggle by closing the 270,000 square foot hospital, which he said was twice the size of a Walmart and employed more than 600 people.
“A nonprofit that routinely earns hundreds of millions of dollars in profit closed our hospital because they couldn’t sustain a $4 million annual loss to keep our hospital open,” Mr. Fetterman said at a talk in 2013. (UPMC says the loss was more.)
That same year, though, Mr. Fetterman defended UPMC when then-Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl sued the health system in a challenge to its tax exemption. In an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mr. Fetterman wrote that even though he had “three years’ worth of bloody knuckles from this unrequited relationship” with UPMC, soaking the health system for tax revenue would set a bad precedent for nonprofits that do much to make Pittsburgh successful.
“As the father of two small children (with Highmark insurance), if, God forbid, something should happen to them, I’m rushing them to UPMC Children’s Hospital,” Mr. Fetterman wrote. “I’m grateful that this world-class facility exists, and I have no issue with UPMC paying no property taxes on it. This hospital is a $750 million investment in Pittsburgh that saves our children’s lives every day.”
Two years later, he seemed to cast doubt on UPMC’s tax exempt status on Twitter, asking why the health system isn’t able to pay all of its workers a “living wage” while paying its top executives millions of dollars per year. But the health system’s refusal to open an urgent care center in his town may have soured the relationship further.
Allegheny Health Network, now affiliated with Highmark, ended up opening an urgent care center in Braddock in 2015, which Mr. Fetterman described as Highmark doing “the right thing.” Though UPMC continued to assert that it left behind health care options and connections in Braddock, including van service to get people to nearby UPMC doctors and hospitals, Mr. Fetterman said at the time that none of that was enough to replace the loss of the hospital.
Mr. Fetterman said he told UPMC officials then that it wouldn’t be the last time they’d hear from him. On Friday, he said Mr. Shapiro is the “tip of the spear,” but that UPMC has the entire structure of Pennsylvania’s state government saying, “Knock it off.”
“I am optimistic that at this final juncture, they have met their match,” Mr. Fetterman said.