According to the Sunday LNP, January 25 edition lede: “LG Health revenue nears $1B”
“Taking those into account, the report says, LG Health’s effective annual operating revenue is approximately $1 billion.
“A separate report issued by auditor Grant Thornton LLP in October says the organization’s total surplus for fiscal year 2014 was $148 million, up from $100.7 million the previous year.”
(Strangely the article can be found in the print and e-edition, but not at the website, at least as of mid-Sunday morning.)
Let’s do some math: Profits are at approximately $150 million. The population of Lancaster County comes to about 500 thousand. Disregarding the small modest market shares of the other three hospitals, this amounts to $300 per capita, or $1200 extra paid per family of four.
Yes, the typical family is spending at least twelve hundred dollars more annually because of the high prices Lancaster General Health (LGH) charges both insurance companies and patients due to its ever growing monopolistic control of health care services in Lancaster County.
We are entitled to receive good medical care from LNP, a ‘public charity’ which is a publicly owned hospital. Others receive comparable care elsewhere without having to pay such a premium. Must Lancaster residents pay an extra $1200 per family to fund exhorbitant profits?
LGH governance lacks transparency. I’s board is made up of establishment Caucasians. There is no voice for minorities or for the middle class, let alone the poor.
LGH holds no public meetings except once a year, and that isn’t well publicized. Even then, they avoid questions or statements from the audience. GH executives are disdainful of requests for interview and its media representatives serve up only Pablum.
Of one thing we can be sure: The beds of all of the LGH executives are well feathered.
The Public may own LGH; but we have no say in how it is run.
