(CNN) -- Matt Aldridge would have trouble contemplating life without the Shriners Hospital for Children in Greenville, South Carolina. Maddie Aldridge has received extensive care at South Carolina's Shriners Hospital, including leg amputation. Aldridge, 28, and his 21-month-old daughter, Maddie, were born without shinbones. Both had their legs amputated at Shriners near their first birthdays. Like all care given to youths admitted to any of North America's 22 Shriners Hospitals, their surgeries and follow-up treatments were free to them. Aldridge estimates the care he received through his teens in the Shriners' system -- which admits children irrespective of their parents' income -- cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, approaching the lifetime limits of some insurance policies.
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Hospitals' leaders seek savings after endowment fund shrinks in stock market
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One solution could be closing six of 22 hospitals
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Fraternity representatives would have to approve closures in July meeting
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South Carolina family: We'd be devastated without Shriners' free, expert care
The system's board says it may ask the fraternity's membership in July for authority to close six hospitals -- including the one in @placeholder -- largely because the endowment fund that supports the hospitals dropped from $8.5 billion to $5.2 billion over the last year as the stock market plummeted.