Hospital’s Motivations

* It is only too clear what is motivating Community Memorial Hospital officials to attempt by electoral initiative to steal the taxpayers’ money. They want to force the county to close down Ventura County Medical Center, their major competitor.

Sure, they will use voter dissatisfaction with the county supervisors and the frequent incompetence of the county bureaucracy to try to win support for their proposal, and that will resonate in the minds of many who share the view that Ventura County has not been well-managed in recent years. But the bottom line is that their petition will not bring one new health service to residents of the county. It simply would give Community Memorial and its cohorts a license to steal from the county taxpayers.

When Community Memorial opens its doors willingly and without reservation to the uninsured, the poor and the underprivileged, then and only then can a case be made for it to share in government funds for health care.

The right solution is to fix the county government, but that would be too creative and too much in the interest of our community well-being for the self-serving scoundrels at Community Memorial. It would just have been in the public interest, something they obviously care little about.

J. AUSTIN IVEY

KITTY IVEY

Malibu