Monday, May 17, 2021

Why For Profit Hospitals... Ought To Tread Lightly, On Their Most Vulnerable Patients -- During A Pandemic


I do wonder what the analogous stats look like, at HCA, and Anderson Cancer Centers, as well -- for example. I would be fairly confident that this is not just one "outlier" in the for-profit provider chain pantheon.

And the worst of it is that the below for profit hospital company took close to three quarters of a billion dollars in taxpayer support funds (not counting loans), to cover the pandemic -- while suing their patients by the thousands, often for small amounts. . . and paying executives multi-million dollar bonuses for what was called "stellar" performance. Do read it all, at CNN:

. . .Hospitals owned by Community Health Systems, Inc., one of America's largest hospital chains, have filed at least 19,000 lawsuits against their patients over allegedly unpaid medical bills since March 2020, even as other hospitals around the country have moved to curtail similar lawsuits during the coronavirus pandemic, a CNN investigation found. . . .

"I can't think of a worse thing a hospital system can be doing than suing patients for medical bills during a pandemic and a recession," said Caitlin Donovan, the spokeswoman for the National Patient Advocate Foundation, a patients' rights group.

CHS in 2020 enjoyed its most profitable year in at least a decade, even as it was suing patients during the pandemic. The company made $511 million in net income last year, a big swing after four straight years of annual losses. That strong financial result led to the company's top executives earning millions of dollars worth of bonuses, according to documents it has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. . . .

One reason for the success: CHS has been buoyed by taxpayer support. It received $705 million in pandemic-related aid from the federal government's CARES Act and other state and local programs in 2020. . . .


Every bit of the above is. . . deplorable. Damnation. Out.

नमस्ते

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