This note came in from a reader:
Remember, one of the major arguments for the CH. We needed a “stand alone” children’s hospital in order to get the full benefit of federal funding. This was one of the arguments to counter the Sierra Providence supporters. The judge and Valenti argued that SPHN’s children’s hospital was not “stand alone.” Hence, it didn’t have the full funding potential to afford different specialists. Apparently, we’ve forgotten this. Now, we are hearing that the CH should not be stand alone.
How we forget what was said in the past.
The people involved are hoping that you do not remember.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
How could it ever possibly be “stand-alone” if it has to pay such an exorbitant rent to UMC?
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The Children s Hospital could have Stood alone if the it’s Independent Board and Leaders had done the right thing and not spent more than it took in….
We still need a real El Paso Children’s Hospital for the great children care it can deliver!
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Your argument is absurd.
EPCH couldn’t possibly cut expenses enough to make the numbers work. The amount of money EPCH spent was largely locked in and dictated from day one by none other than UMC before the doors ever opened.
EPCH was built on a faulty pro forma developed by Valenti and his team and approved by the UMC board. The revenue assumptions created by UMC were wrong, plain and simple, but they had locked EPCH into unreasonably high expenses for rent and service fees.
Reduce the rent and the fees charged by UMC and the fortunes of EPCH would have been dramatically different. The payroll services fees alone are ridiculous. UMC didn’t want to simply recover costs; it wanted to profit from EPCH.
Even UMC could not make the original EPCH pro forma work. If UMC gets control, they will no longer charge themselves the same rent they charged EPCH, nor will they charge the same fees for services. They will then declare themselves geniuses.
You can criticize EPCH all you want, but UMC let $90 million in accounts receivable build up. So they, too, are blatantly irresponsible.
Former UMC chair Bill Hansen sat on both boards for a period of time while the problems were brewing and the debt owed to UMC was building up. And throughout all of this, Valenti’s bio page on the UMC website has declared him a member of the EPCH board.
This entire situation is disgusting and shameful. It was created entirely by greed and empire-building. UMC will never have credibility until it accepts a large portion of the responsibility for creating this mess.
“The last act is the greatest treason: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”
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UMC meets its stand alone budget…and I understand Mr Valenti was a non voting Board member of EPCH….The people on Boards are un-paid Volunteers and interested in helping their community. They are also responsible for the financial responsibility and success. The current Board & CEO Firm of EPCH is bent on sinking the current EPCH..
Healthcare is NOT free!
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Even as a non-voting member, Valenti had a responsibility to the CH as he promoted it to the public to begin with. It was his “brain child.” So, Valenti knew about the debt, he knew that the plan was unsustainable, yet he said nothing.
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No, as Brutus has previously reported, UMC is losing its ass. In 2014 it lost $12 million on operations alone, even with El Paso taxpayers subsidizing it to the tune of more than $80 million annually. Here are the facts, which you conveniently ignore:
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There is another reason for a stand alone CH and that is pediatricians. They are attracted to their own CH where they don’t have to share the parking lot with the other MD specialists as at a general hospital. You want to recruit good pediatricians, build a CH.
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Remember the words – RECALL, FIRE, and NEVER forget who got us here and NEVER vote for them again no matter what office they run for!!!
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I found this petition on-line:
https://www.change.org/p/veronica-escobar-carlos-leon-vincent-perez-andrew-haggerty-oscar-leeser-david-stout-joe-moody-beto-o-rourke-jose-rodriguez-the-el-paso-county-commissioners-need-to-stop-recklessly-spending-tax-payer-money?recruiter=2794942&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
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