John Cole’s Tennessee: Do not pass ‘Go’!

October 4, 2023 6:00 am

An illustration of a Monopoly card that says, "State grants you a hospital monopoly!" Five East Tennessee hospitals merged through a Certificate of Public Advantage (COPA) to form a medical monopoly through Ballad Health, leaving patients little option but to use Ballad Services -- which fails to meet healthcare benchmarks.

Five East Tennessee hospitals merged through a Certificate of Public Advantage (COPA) to form a medical monopoly through Ballad Health, leaving patients little option but to use Ballad Services — which fails to meet healthcare benchmarks.

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.

John Cole

John Cole's political cartoons on Tennessee topics appear in the Tennessee Lookout weekly. He is currently the staff cartoonist for the editorial pages of The Times-Tribune in Scranton, PA. Prior to this, he enjoyed a nearly 20-year run with The Herald-Sun in Durham, NC. His award-winning work is internationally syndicated by Cagle Cartoons.