On Supreme Court’s largely upholding of the Affordable Care Act, the New York Times reports:
“Hospitals will gain millions of paying customers. Insurers, by contrast, could face crimped profits from restrictive rules. Medical device and pharmaceutical companies will bear new taxes and other higher payouts, but they were already expecting such costs…
“That will mean fewer uninsured people streaming into their emergency rooms receiving treatment for which they cannot pay.”
It is highly likely that once again LGH’s ‘profits’ will exceed $100 million per year. Yet this ‘Public Charity’ is run by an Establishment clique with no accountability to the broader Lancaster public.
Even LGH has acknowledged that, due to its virtual monopolistic advantage, it is able to extract high payments from health insurance companies. The insurance companies in turn pass along the added cost to Lancaster residents in the form of higher premiums.
If LGH utilized its vast earnings in a responsible manner that pursued its mission of public health and education, the added insurance premiums would be conscionable. Instead, the LGH board and administration acts in a clandestine manner and, to the extent that a single federal report discloses its activities, have wasted huge sums on perks for its president and likely others.
Tom Beeman received $1,150,000 for not working for LGH for a year, a gift of questionable legality. But the politically hobobled state attorney general’s office is highly unlikely to address the issue. (As we saw from the Sandusky scandal, the AG’s office even demurs at investigating child rape when politics and campaign contributions are involved!)
LGH’s failure to provide transparency and to give more than token support to public health care (no contributions for a syringe exchange) and public education (token gifts to pacify local organizations) is the greatest Lancaster scandal since the disingenuous promotion of the Convention Center Project. Yet no one but NewsLanc has the guts to report and editorialize about it.
Much of the communities resources and bonding capacity was squandered on the Convention Center / Marriott project. Now tens of millions that should be helping to improve our community is being siphoned off and mismanaged by the LGH establishment clique, which neither allows reporting and public attendance at all but one meeting a year and then no longer permits public comment.
Very sad. Very sad indeed.
For the truth about what LGH does in the community, visit http://bit.ly/NLtSvk
Tom Beeman served our country while away from Lancaster General and on reservist duty with the Navy. He led a miltary hospital that treated wounded warriors returning home from Iraq and Afgahistan. That you fail to note this and instead attack him personally to get money for a syringe exchange program speaks volume about your character.
EDITOR: The issue isn’t about how Tom Beeman and millions of others have served in the Armed Forces. The issue is Beeman, unlike any others, received $1,150,000 gift from a charitable institution.
If a private company wanted to make such a gift to an execugtive on leave, fine. But trustees of a public charity do not have the right to do so. Perhaps the next state attorney general will investigate.