I posted this just after midnight on Tuesday; it has been suggested that I repost it during "prime time." So, here it is.
On Monday night I heard a snippet on the local evening TV news, referencing
this Tennessean article.
This was printed in my (and Frist's) hometown rag; it's getting some national media attention, but not the attention I think it deserves. So, I thought I'd let a few more people know about it.
It seems the senior Senator from my state has HCA on the brain and in the veins. First, his blind trust is, apparently, not really blind at all, but merely a bit nearsighted. Now this. The headline reads,
Frist votes aid HCA's business interests
Review of 10 years in Senate shows pattern of favoring firm
Published in Nashville's Sunday Tennessean, the article says, in part,
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is pushing a "healthy America" plan that includes tax breaks to help the poor buy insurance and legal limits on excessive jury awards that Frist says hurt access to care.
Frist's plan would do something else besides help the poor and reduce what he says are frivolous lawsuits.
It would help make money for HCA Inc., the Nashville-based hospital company that's been the foundation of the Frist family's wealth.
Gosh, how would it do THAT?
Well, Sparky, I'm glad you asked.
One example is the bill Frist introduced in July to help insure the uninsured and limit jury awards.
Uninsured patients hurt HCA, which loses billions of dollars when they don't pay their bills. The company set aside $2.7 billion in 2004 for such doubtful accounts.
And HCA owns an insurance company that would benefit from limits on hefty jury awards. Health Care Indemnity Inc. is one of the country's largest providers of medical malpractice insurance, with gross premiums of $382.3 million a year.
But, that's not all.
Other bills supported by Frist have given hospitals more money for treating seniors and curbed development of physician-owned specialty hospitals that compete with HCA.
He's also helped HCA in less obvious ways. Several years ago, the Tennessee Republican fought a Democratic-sponsored version of a "patients' bill of rights" that would have allowed patients to sue their HMOs and collect unlimited damages.
Physician groups such as the American Medical Association supported the bill, but Frist, a former heart-lung transplant surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, opposed it.
Now, remember, he helped push along the Medicare Modernization Act, which gave us the unfathomable senior prescription drug plan. But, there's more to the Act than meets the eye.
Perhaps the best-known part of the Medicare act is the part expanding the government's health plan to include prescription-drug benefits for seniors and younger people with disabilities. Drug benefits begin on Jan. 1.
But there was more to the measure than prescription drugs. The legislation gave hospitals an extra $25 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments over 10 years, according to the American Hospital Association, which supported it.
Last year, Medicare and Medicaid accounted for about 35% of HCA's total revenue.
The act also placed an 18-month moratorium on new physician-owned specialty hospitals that would compete directly with full-service community hospitals such as those operated by HCA.
. . .
James Grant, president of the American Surgical Hospital Association, said the limits were "politically motivated." The group represents physician-owned specialty hospitals.
"There's no justification for having this thing in the bill," other than to squelch competition, said Grant, who lives in Nashville.
I laughed when I read the line that said, "Frist has said he gave the order this summer to sell his shares in HCA to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest." If he truly wanted to avoid a conflict of interest, he would have divested himself of that stock, oh, 10 years or so ago.
A consumer advocate with the California-based Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights, Carmen Balber, sums it up.
"The senator is incapable of totally erasing his ties to that company because his father and brother founded it and because the family fortune is tied up in HCA stock."
As I say, I don't think this is getting the attention it deserves, so I thought I'd share it with all of you.
Stay strong!