Dozens of Twin Cities clergy members and supporters gathered outside Hennepin County Medical Center Thursday for a 24-hour prayer vigil, as they urge state lawmakers to fund the hospital.
The hospital is the state’s biggest trauma center, and a major training site for the region’s doctors, but it’s facing financial struggles. The public facility serves many low-income and uninsured patients, and it’s been hit hard by federal cuts to Medicaid and rising costs of uncompensated care. That’s led HCMC to cut some staff and programming.
The hospital is now relying on the Legislature to help it survive.
Minister JaNaé Bates Imari said at the start of the vigil that the state needs to keep HCMC open, in the interest of the patients who struggle to find care elsewhere.
“It is a moral responsibility,” Bates Imari said. “It is also just the right thing to do if we want to make sure we have healthy people who live here.”
The state Senate passed a bill this week that includes $150 million in direct grants for HCMC, among other funding for Medicaid and food assistance. It passed on party lines, in a narrow 34-33 vote. The tied house has yet to vote on its own version of the bill. Other proposed legislation would allocate some sales tax funds to HCMC.
B. Charvez Russell is a pastor at Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in south Minneapolis. He said it's important that lawmakers do what they can to keep HCMC open.
“This is about whether we believe health care is a right and not a privilege, and that means that we treat the sick, the poor and the vulnerable just as we do anybody else, because the better the least of these do, the better all of us do,” Russell said.
Organizers of Thursday’s vigil plan to stay outside the building until 10 a.m. Friday. They said they expect hundreds of faith leaders and clergy to participate.
