Images: San Fernando Valley History Digital Library

The Daily News reports that the new chief executive of Van Nuys’ Valley Presbyterian Hospital doesn’t need to work. He is wealthy and is taking over the 380 bed hospital because it is a challenge.

Albert Greene previously battled nurses and unions at Hollywood Presbyterian in an attempt to cut costs. Now he wants to find a way to cement the financial solvency of Valley, which opened in 1958. According to the Daily News, the hospital “admits 25,000 patients, sees an additional 40,000 in its emergency room and treats 35,000 people on an outpatient basis.” Smack in the middle of the burgeoning immigrant community, ¾ of the patients rely on Medicare or Medi-Cal, whose payments do not cover all of the hospital’s costs. Additional pressure and expenses came from the closing of nearby Northridge Hospital in 2004.

The struggle and survival of one health care facility in Van Nuys dramatizes why immigration, the war in Iraq, Homeland Security, and the impending collapse of General Motors and Ford—driven into debt by health care spending—makes it so necessary to reform America’s health system. While one well to do CEO at a hospital does what he thinks is necessary to save his job and his institution, millions of others endure poor health care and the lethal prospect of losing a community hospital.

Where are the compassionate conservatives on this? And what do the liberals who march to save illegal immigration think about this?