My mom worked in the admitting office at McLaren for many years. She could sometimes pull a few strings and get you private room if you wanted it. I loved having lunch and milkshakes at the dimly lit little diner/coffee shop just off the main lobby. Our family befriended a lot of the foreign residents from Peru, Saudi Arabia and various other exotic locales. I've often wondered what your vision of America would be like if Flint was your only exposure to the country. (A lot of these guys played soccer with my brother in the Flint summer leagues, bringing some skill to an extremely rough brand of soccer that often resembled hockey or football more than futbal.) And I even got to visit the morgue once with my mom, where I discovered they really do have toe-tags on the bodies.
Flint may turn to casinos to cure its economic ills, but the The Economist points out that hospitals might be just what the doctor ordered. (Sorry for that tortured healthcare metaphor.)
All this is an extreme example of a growing phenomenon. After the 20th-century factory town, such as Flint, Michigan, comes the 21st-century hospital town. Rural hospitals are often the main employers in their communities. Even Flint is trying to re-position itself as a medical hub. But a select few cities have entered the era of the mega-hospital. The most dramatic are Rochester, a medium-sized city where Mayo has long been a star business, and Cleveland, Ohio, a rustbelt city that has seen its hospitals boom and one, the Cleveland Clinic, become a new economic force. Each hospital is a behemoth: Mayo's revenues in 2006 totalled $6.3 billion, Cleveland's $4.4 billion.
