[Info-vax] Down Again

[Ken Fairfield]

On Aug 8, 2:50 pm, David J Dachtera <djesys... at spam.comcast.net>
wrote:
> winstonsmith wrote:
>
> > On Aug 8, 3:49 am, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> > > David J Dachtera wrote:
> > > > Your's truly has once again been made "redundant".
>
> > > Make sure you don't get too close to a scalpel weilding surgeon, they
> > > are trained to remove redundant stuff :-)
>
> > > Sorry to hear about your situation. Out of curiosity, how does the
> > > business side of hospitals feel about what Obama would like to do to the
> > > health care system in the USA ? Will it affect them negatively (lower
> > > revenus) or positively (more customers) ?
>
> > They like it, because they were already starting to modernize anyway
> > and would appreciate the $$$. The $$$ they are spending "comes out of
> > a separate budget" or that is the excuse why they've frozen salaries,
> > dropped the retirement plan but still are spending like mad on
> > building projects and technology.
>
> You need to understand teh difference between a for-profit and a
> non-profit hospital.
>
> The for-profits are in deep spit.
>
> The non-profits are reaping what they have sown. Some NPO hospitals
> still have to build/renovate to keep from showing a profit. Others -
> like my former gig - are taking it on the chin because of their
> investments. As they lose equity, they lose financial strength overall.
> So, their cash flow takes a hit as well as the balance sheet.
>
> Of recent, the business schools prepared students for a boom economy. In
> the current bust economy, they flounder - badly. This is not unique to
> healthcare, of course.
>
> As the question of "what Obama wants to do", you need reframe that. It's
> what the public wants healthcare to do versus what healthcare management
> wants to do to the public. Obama is just the advocate for the common
> American. You've got insurance companies practicing medicine unlicensed,
> RNs and LPNs second-guessing MD and specialists, and many other manners
> of greed and evil trying to dictate who gets care and who doesn't, who
> lives and who doesn't, etc. as a means to please shareholders.
>
> So long as healthcare includes for-profit entities, evil and greed will
> continue to rule the day.

Couldn't have said it better, David.

My own situation is that stimulus funds dedicated to modernizing
health care, i.e., EMR (electronic medical records) is pushing my
(non-profit) organization to pull-in the schedule to install a new EMR
in all five of our hospitals.  So that's good.

We've been hit hard by the loss of investment value, as David
notes, but I have tremendous respect for our CFO who is
managing to help us to meet our pre-downturn plans, and even
grow, while the economy staggers along.

On the specific subject of reforming health care, our CEO has
yet to tell us what our "official" position is.

My personal feeling matches David's.  Having grown up before
for-profit health care, (you can actually trace that to Richard
Nixon's
administration), I think we need to take the profit motive out of the
"industry".  I'd go for single-payer, e.g., some form of Medicare for
all, but a *robust* public option could be acceptable.  Anything
less will just perpetuate the death-by-insurance-company status
quo (oh, and bankruptcy-by-insurance-company as well as
starve-or-buy-meds of Medicare Part D, which is nothing if not
pure corporate welfare).

   Getting off my soapbox, Ken