To: Mr. William H. Ryan, Acting Attorney General, Pennsylvania We, the undersigned citizens of Northeastern Pennsylvania, urge you to deny approval of the purchase of Scranton Mercy Hospital by Community Health Service of Nashville Tennessee. Based on their record elsewhere, we believe that CHS will downgrade our hospital and eliminate essential services and charity care in their effort to boost profits. Despite profits of nearly $250 million last year and over $13 billion in revenue, CHS seeks to avoid providing any charity care, often demanding payment before essential medical services, or presenting patients with bills while they are in their Hospital beds. CHS has closed essential services at Brandywine Hospital, closing the only Trauma center in Chester County, and has eliminated maternity services in several hospitals. In violating commitments made upon the acquisition of Brandywine, CHS has shown that it cannot be trusted. CHS attempts to gain dominance in the areas its Hospitals serve, thus giving it the ability to set prices on a monopoly basis, at the cost of access to care for the uninsured and underinsured. Acquisition of Scranton Mercy would give CHS too much control over the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton market, and allow them to enforce a race to the bottom in the standard of care as non-profits would be forced to compete. CHS as an employer has cut wages and benefits, and imposed a health insurance plan on its own employees which can push those employees into bankruptcy through enormous out of pocket costs, especially if they must go outside CHS for a service CHS doesn’t provide.