Since the LHP Hospital Group – a Texas-based for-profit hospital group owned in part by a private equity firm – first proposed taking over and merging Waterbury and St. Mary’s Hospitals, hundreds of residents of Waterbury have raised serious concerns about what the impact will be on health care and jobs in Waterbury.  Click here for a flyer that outlines some basic information about the proposed takeover, and why so many of us are concerned.

Now we are bringing our concerns to the Waterbury Board of Aldermen on Tuesday, February 21st at 6pm.  Click here for a flyer about the event, and BE THERE to send a message to our local elected officials about how important this issue is to the entire community.

As a part of a coalition called Community United – together with the Alliance for Retired Americans, the National Physicians Alliance, CT Health Care Associates, CT Citizen Action Group, the Working Families Party, the Western CT Labor Council Health Care for All Coalition, and the Naugatuck Valley Project – 1199 has helped lead the way in asking the LHP Hospital Group to sit down with the community, answer our questions, and work with us to develop a plan that improves health care and protects jobs in Waterbury.

“We have been asking LHP to meet with us since December but they have refused,” says Community United co-chair Steven Schrag. “We wrote to them and talked personally to CEO Daniel Moen, but he would not set a meeting date with us. We were promised by Dr. Jerome Sugar that we would try to set up a meeting, but Dr. Sugar couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it either.” Both Moen and Sugar have said that LHP would meet with community people “at the appropriate time.”

“We refuse to be an afterthought in this process,” says Schrag. “So we are bringing our questions to the Board of Aldermen to see if they can help.”