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The healthcare industry is becoming a market-based
system which Capitalizes on an essential service that we canšt seem
to live without. Until we can learn self-diagnosis and treatment
and better ways to stay healthy, we will continue to fund an industry
out of control.
Healthcare fraud tacks on billions of dollars yearly
to the already skyrocketing costs of healthcare in America. Time
and time again criminal conduct is punished and then re-punished,
in a never-ending cycle. The system is plagued with fraud and abuse.
As a result, 195,000 people die annually due to medical errors within
this broken system. The legal arm that at one time was red-flagging
these tragedies is being twisted by tort reform. Without civil lawsuits,
a victim's plea for justice goes unheard. Tort reform is a huge
mistake.
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Health care fraud adds billions to cost
of care
Statistics from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Services reveal Americans spent more than 1.7 trillion on healthcare
in 2003. Industry experts estimate that from 3% to 10% of this total
is lost to health care fraud, putting the minimum amount spent on
fraud at over $100 million PER DAY. Consumers need only look at
their health insurance premiums and co-payments to recognize the
impact of health care fraud. Patient harm is an additional problem.
With increasing unnecessary surgeries and procedures, it is becoming
a real issue.
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UC faulted for paying millions in bonuses
The University of California gave nearly $2.4
million in bonuses to 65 top executives at 5 teaching hospitals
in 2004. Since such bonuses are common in the healthcare industry,
a UC official says it is necessary to attract and retain the best
managers. A union spokeswoman notes the money could have been better
spent on patient care by reinstating previously cut staffing and
services.
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A Fortune To Be Made
A 21 year veteran RN explains how cutting costs,
hiring lower-wage techs, understaffing units reduces salaries paid
out to RNs while the nations most expensive hospitals mark up charges
an average of 525%. The healthcare industry is a market driven,
market concentrated industry. The first and second largest hospitals
chains in the United States post profits in the hundreds of millions
while paying huge federal penalties attempting to achieve economic
supremacy. While nurses work at break neck speed to do a good job,
and the product continues to disintegrate as the assembly line accelerates
to turn a profit. The final result: it's dangerous to be sick and
patients are called upon to solicit a family or friend to serve
as an advocate for their safety during their stay.
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Patient Watch: Hospitals and HMOs are cutting
care to make record profits. Patients are paying the price.
Dangerous changes putting patients at risk when
staff cuts of only 8% can increase mortality rates by 400%. Nurses
and other staff members are threatened with termination when they
speak on behalf of patients. Healthcare is the number one profit
industry in the country.
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Engineering a Crisis: How hospitals created
a shortage of nurses.
The Heathcare Industry and its proponents play
a role in the origins of the RN shortage. Trends indicate that RNs
have lost trust in the industry, have left the hospital setting
and are not coming back. Guided by market-driven cost-cutting, profit
making and large-scale mergers and acquisitions to increase market
share have resulted in concentration of healthcare resources in
the hands of a shrinking number of very large companies, consuming
$453 billion in healthcare with a rise in profits and executive
stock portfolios, resources that could have been better spent elsewhere.
Virtually everything has changes, nursing is no longer prioritized
as the healthcare industry deskills, displaces and deprofessionalizes
nursing. Under enormous economic pressure, nurses are forced to
delegate work to persons with very little training. Exhausted nurses
run ragged by too many patients cause mistakes.
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Dangerous Incentives, Remuneration, Insider
Trading, Political Links, and Court Action.
Financial incentives are dangerous business practices
at the root of the majority of major frauds and misuse of patients.
They are also the key to market success. Exercising stock options
and enormous compensations total into the hundreds of millions for
executives. "Jeffrey Barbakow" is the poster child for corporate
greed in the healthcare industry," says executive director of the
California Nurses Association. Barbakow has received about $400
million in total compensation and stock sales.
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Tenet Tries To Shake
Legal Woes
After 2 years of negotiations and $450 million in legal settlements,
the company still faces a lingering courtroom challenge. In August
2003, Tenet paid 54 million to settle Justice Department charges
that the company profited from unnecessary heart surgeries on Medicare
patients. Tenet sold the hospital when the government sought to
remove it from the Medicare program. At the end of 2004, Tenet agreed
to pay $395 million to settle a class-action suit with patients
and survivors of allegedly unnecessary medical procedures.
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Whose hospital is it?
As Tenet sought permission to close the Medical
College of Pennsylvania Hospital and began slowly withdrawing services,
closing floors and letting staff fade away, a 21 year old died of
a gunshot wound because the struggling emergency room was on "diversion"
temporarily closed to new patients. This hit a particular nerve,
partly because Tenet has blossomed into the Enron of the hospital
business.
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HCA to Pay $745 Million in Partial Settlement
HCA-The Healthcare Co. (formerly Columbia/HCA)
agrees to pay a $745 million settlement for years of over billing
Medicare and other government programs. HCA could pay up to 1 billion
to settle the investigation. The company changed it's name as part
of restructuring based on principles on which the company was originally
founded.
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HCA CEO makes $5.8 Million After Exercising
Stock Options
HCA, #1 U.S. hospital operator reports CEO will
make $5.8 million from a stock sale as shares increased in value
during January nearly 10%. After exercising stock options granted
to him in 1997 priced at $26.80 per share which he sold for $44.70
per share, he will still own 2.1 million shares.
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A Highflier Grounded
HealthSouth's corporate founder, Richard Scrushy, indicted of massive
fraud. By 2002, the company had grown to the nation's largest provider
of outpatient service, diagnostic imaging, and rehabilitative healthcare
with locations in all 50 states. Scrushy blames subordinates for
the misdeeds and invokes his 5th Amendment right before a congressional
committee.
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CFO: Scrushy said to 'fix the numbers'
In a 58 count indictment, the government contends
Richard Scrushy, HealthSouth's former CEO, conspired to inflate
earnings by $2.7 billion from 1996-2002 to boost company shares
and enrich himself. 15 former HealthSouth executives have agreed
to plead guilty in the accounting scandal.
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The drug industry's chokehold on America's
Healthcare
Pharmaceutical companies hit by scandals regarding
the safety of "blockbuster drugs" Vioxx, a leading arthritis and
pain medication was withdrawn from the market after it was shown
to cause thousands of heart attacks and an estimated 55,000 deaths.
Celebrex, manufactured by Pfizer, faces similar difficulties. Other
drugs are being scrutinized for severe, unwanted side-effects and
many thousands of Americans are getting sick and dying from prescription
drugs prematurely entering the market. Americans spend $200 billion
a year on prescription drugs. From 1998 to 2000 prescription drugs
tripled as a percentage of the gross domestic product. Fortune 500
reveals that in 2002, profits of 10 drug companies were more than
total profits of other 490 businesses. Drug Industry CEO,s rake
in 8 digit salaries along with 8 digit stock options.
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Patients are not the problem
With plenty of public debate surrounding what
is causing doctors' insurance rates to soar, there is little talk
of the existing epidemic of medical mal practice. Up to 98,000 die
annually due to medical errors. Rather than a focus on improving
safety, the focus is on placing legal obstacles in the way of sick
and injured patients. The solution lies within the insurance industry
that made more money last year than ever in its history. Sadly with
tort reform comes more deaths.
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Lawsuits protect public
100,000 to 195,000 people die each year due to
malpractice in American hospitals. Those who attack layers and demand
radical changes to the legal system are blaming the messengers and
trying to punish the victims. The health care system needs more
accountability, not less. A health care system without accountability
that comes from lawsuits and public trials will mirror that of the
HMOs. Federal laws protect theses companies from lawsuits and they
practice medicine without a license, overruling medical decisions,
causing death and suffering.
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