Health mergers lead to decreased services with the most glaring examples of closure of maternity wards, pediatric wards, and rural health clinics. Mergers drive up the cost of care, sometimes as much as 20%. And it does not improve the quality of care.

Any proposed hospital merger must be evaluated through that reality. The Sutter Aligner proposal is not just a business transaction. It has real consequences for patients, for families, and healthcare workers across the state.

We and many of our colleagues have deep concerns that the acquisition will accelerate the consolidation and loss of essential services, a contribution of of the for-profit behavior of nonprofit health care systems that is now common practice within Alina and across the nation.

We are very proud that in 2023 Democrats led the charge and passed frankly nationleading legislation regarding um healthc care consolidation that gives incredible power to the attorney general to step in on behalf of ordinary motans uh and protect them from uh the uh power of what can happen when there's too much consolidation.

A community benefits agreement is a legally binding contract that we would sign um between the coalition and uh the companies or with the attorney general and the companies outlining the obligations that the that the new company... it talks about things like protecting union contracts, patient care. Um we're asking for them to talk about how they're going to manage price increases, how they're going to preserve access to to um to motans.

Sutter is especially troublesome to us because they have a significant pattern of unscrupulous behavior. Um they have paid out almost a billion dollars because they continuously break the law. They paid out um $800 million across multiple major antitrust settlements. They paid out $90 million to settle Medicare Medicare fraud.

It should not be a surprise to anyone that hospitals around Minnesota are struggling. And we saw that in sharp relief this spring when HCMC literally came days away from closing because of these pressures. And what is important to remember is that they didn't do this just because or because they thought it was good policy. They did it to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.