Cottage Housing Spoken For

Are the homeowner association dues and votes weighted differently between the low-cost professional units and the free market ones? I see the seeds of future dissent brewing.

They have to sell back to Cottage Corporation, and at a low price with no equity accumulated, so why are these even considered "bought" "sold" or "owned"?

It is just a game because rental housing is too plebian for the Cottage snootiness.

Wait, they tore down a hospital to lose money building housing for another hospitals employees? I'm afraid I don't get it.
To me, having multiple hospitals is a good thing.

If having multiple hospitals was such a good thing, why did St Francis go broke and have to be torn down?

I don't know the answer to that but having a choice usually beats being served by a monopoly. Competition is what helps keep prices lower and can anyone honestly say if it really "had to be torn down?" Did they "go broke" or was it planned that way by a management that operated like Bain Capital?
To tear down the buildings was a decision someone made based on their intentions for the land the structures occupied.
Seismic retrofits have kept many older structures Usable, the Granada Building, for example.
Did St.Francis "go broke" before or after being purchased by Cottage? Was it all a plan to make Cottage the one and only hospital?
I don't know the answer but I still think having choices in local healthcare is desirable.
How would it be if Santa Barbara Had only one Restaurant?
Car Dealer? Furniture Store? how popular would that scenario be?

I've always been very happy with my experiences at Cottage but I do think the community was better served having two hospitals, regardless of who owned them. I'm sure the ER staff agree.

A physician does a residency - a medical student goes to medical school. The average residency at Cottage (internal medicine, radiology or surgery) is 4 years, not 5.

Hard to know where to begin to remedy the factual misstatementts in Gluteous post. Just ignore all of them is the better choice. Sorry but you really have all of your facts just plain wrong, but I can see they serve some sort of personal agenda. Whatever, carry on.

Then why bother posting a comment Oblati, just to see your name in lights on your monitor?

There are probably more alternative health care choices in this town which people enjoy paying out of pocket than any other similar community.

There is competition in health care - look no further than the millions getting spent on medical marijuana in this town alone. All that money left the traditional health care market in this town and got diverted to the supplement sellers and the New Age practitioners this town prefers.

Follow the money in this town and see what health care it is willing to buy with their discretionary out of pocket dollars. No wonder it could not afford to support two traditional hospitals.

To clarify, I hope: St Francis Hospital in Santa Barbara was no longer financially viable. Increased operating costs, decreased market share, and the final straw being the new government-mandated sesmic requirements: rebuild, refit, or shut-down. They chose to close, and then Cottage bought the abandoned facility (if I understood my sources correctly).

Like small independent farms, factories, etc, stand-alone hospitals are increasingly bought out or closed down. It's just not as financially viable. The rehabilitation hospital, Goleta Valley, and Santa Ynez hospitals all are still operating as they are because they merged with / were bought by Cottage. If they hadn't, they would either have closed or been bought by some out-of-town corporate hospital system.