The Shameful Tale of Broward's
Two Health Care Taxing Districts

   The entire administrative brass of the North Broward Hospital District attended a special Thursday gathering welcome the new Board of Commissioners responsible for governing the seventh largest health care system in the nation.
   Missing amid all the background and numbers?
   Any mention of exactly why Broward County has two tax-funded hospital systems in the nation – both of which are among the largest in the nation.
   Facts are, the North and South Broward Hospitals Districts annually:
   Generate more than $2 billion in revenue
   Collect more than $220 million in local property taxes
   Provide life-saving care to some 150,000 inpatients.
   Serve more than 500,000 visitors to their emergency rooms.
   Employ more than 11,600 doctors, nurses and other skilled health care workers.
   So much for the powerful basics.
   But as to why we have two giant tax-funded health care systems....
   Well, quite simply, the two Districts offer at least double:
   The number of contracts awarded to politically connected outside vendors
   The chance for campaign contributions
   Opportunities for the governor to reward his party's faithful.
   The need for banks, investment firms and lucrative bond brokers.
   All of which boils down to a ton of patronage, jobs and money – via two huge political power bases – rather than one.
   Which – from the standpoint of both political parties – makes each District a giant golden egg-laying goose for the party in power.
  However...
  All this fails to answer how and why Broward came to be blessed with two political golden geese in first place.
  To answer that question, we need to go back to 1951 when the two tax districts were created as totally separate governmental entities by the Florida Legislature.
   For years, Broward's only hospital had been located in – and totally funded by – the City of Fort Lauderdale on West Broward Boulevard.
   But then, in 1950, local residents decided to build a larger hospital at the present site of Broward General on South Andrews Avenue.
   Which led local residents to seek a special taxing district to finance their new hospital.
   But then someone in Fort Lauderdale remembered -- GASP -- The Jews. 
   And so it came to pass that with the passage of two seperate acts by the Florida Legislature:
   The North Broward Hospital District was created to serve two-thirds of the county north of the Dania canal – which was highly anti-Semitic (with its "restricted" property deeds and hotels.
   While the South District was created to meet the health care needs of the southern third of the county – which was home to the vast majority of Broward's Jewish residents.
   All because, as a virulent center of anti-Antisemitism, Fort Lauderdale didn't want its sick and suffering to be cared for with “Those People” from south Broward.
   And that, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, Is the Rest of the Story.