I have a quick question I ask people if they challenge the wisdom of merging our local Lawrence + Memorial and Westerly hospitals with the Yale-New Haven Health System.

Suppose a loved one has been critically injured in an accident in, say, Westbrook, and the ambulance driver asks if you would rather go to Yale or L+M.

Honestly, who in their right mind would choose the local community hospital over the world-renowned teaching hospital in New Haven, the one affiliated with one of the leading universities in the country?

That's not to diminish the quality health care L+M has delivered to the people of eastern Connecticut all these years.

But even L+M officials will tell you the world of health care is changing, that they are losing money and will no longer be able to maintain the same level of services.

Over the years, when L+M has been criticized for quality of care by state regulators, it has been Yale that has been brought in to improve policies and procedure changes.

It's great to think that oversight will become permanent.

Indeed, the Yale presence will improve the quality of life here, even maybe improve property values.

But you wouldn't know that listening to New London politicians mouthing union objections, as they try to draw concessions and promises from the merger that they are not entitled to.

The shameful mouthing of union talking points hit a noisy new high Tuesday in a news conference on the front steps of New London City Hall organized by Martha Marx, a city councilor who is also the president of the nurses' union.

The lead speaker for the event was none other than Mayor Michael Passero, former union firefighter, who like most of the other leading city officials, all Democrats, said he is not against the merger, as long as demands are met.

The union heavies attending the news conference did not speak. They didn't have to. You could almost see the union collars around the necks of Marx and her fellow councilors, Michael Tranchida, Don Venditto and Efrain Dominguez, glistening in the late afternoon sun.

You would think that if the city officials have time to weigh in on something that is absolutely none of their business — state regulators are thoroughly reviewing the merger — the city must be running smoothly, like a clock.

The person who believes that would also be someone who would tell the ambulance driver to bring their injured loved one to New London, not Yale.

The unions clearly are using the leverage of the regulatory process of the merger to draw concessions on services and job retention. They and their political mouthpieces phrase it in a way to sound sympathetic to patient care when they are actually just protecting union turf.

Of course there are going to be consolidations and savings wrung out of the merger. That's the point. Maybe some of us will have to travel to New Haven for some procedures.

But to suggest, as New London politicians did this week, that one of the great teaching hospitals of the country, also a community nonprofit and an institution much loved in New Haven, by the way, is somehow going to diminish the quality of health care here is absurd.

For the politicians who value their loyalty to unions higher than their constituents' good health, I hope voters notice and remember.

I'll try to help.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com