HCA Racking Up Award after Award!

Finally- we've found some positive news out of the HCA camp. Back in 2005, Columbia/HCA was inducted into the famous (or infamous) INFACT Hall of Shame. The criteria just to nominated for such an award; Companies must "use political influence to the detriment of public health".

'INFACT also released a "Corporate Imbalance Sheet" detailing influence-peddling activities and the impact of Columbia's practices on public health.'

INFACT is a national organization founded in 1977 whose purpose is to stop abuses by transnational corporations and increase their accountability.

Let's hear just some of the great things folks had to say at the awards ceremony outside Columbia/HCA's Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas. I'll just go in order from the Union of American Physicians and Dentists full release found here:

"Communities have seen all across the country what they do, they slash staff, cut services, consolidate and down size," said California Nurse's Association (CNA) Labor Representative Beth Shafran. (our neighbors in Arlington can attest to this)

"We're looking at the largest redeployment of charitable assets in history. People are just now starting to realize the scope of this thing." The "thing" she was referring to was the accelerated rate of takeovers of not-for-profit hospitals by for-profit hospital companies. "Time and time again, this is what we see when Columbia is in the picture," Miller told the Banner. When these acquisitions occur, they are shielded from public scrutiny. Public companies are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose every detail of the transaction. ('shielded from public scrutiny'; sound familiar my fellow Concerned Citizens?)

So how does HCA operate? Here's one example that will make you wonder how they really got that Certificate of Public Need for BRMC;

With a price tag of $2 billion, the 1996 US elections were the most expensive ever. Big business, after investing heavily in campaigns, lined up for their rewards soon after the ballots were counted. Columbia/HCA's phalanx of 97 registered lobbyists in 23 states secured certificates of need and legislative approval of hospital deals. Columbia is Medicare's single largest biller as well, deriving 36% of its profits from the federal program. According to INFACT, there is evidence that Columbia has abused this relationship on more than one occasion. (Not satisfied with simply 'playing the system', they'll rip it off too!)

But that's not all: 'Perhaps one of the most serious charges against Columbia is its penchant for acquiring several properties in one geographic area and then closing one or more of them, creating de-facto, localized monopolies, sometimes leaving isolated rural communities without health care.' Well at least HCA doesn't purchase hospitals in poor, less-insured, inner-city areas, only to shut them down and the transfer the beds to a more affluent, better health-insured one, right? Now that would be really bad. Oh- wait- they do that too.

Back to more great quotes:

"They (Columbia/HCA) are rapacious," Columbia Watch editor Carl Bloice said, "Unfortunately it is only when Columbia moves into a community, then they learn what Columbia has been doing in other parts of the country." (looks like I'm right on cue)

"They buy clinics, buy doctors. They go for power and they own you," [Kathy] Berry, PR Director at St. Mary's Hospital in Oklahoma said. "They own your town and your newspaper." (guess we can throw blogs in their too- Loudoun Scoop, TC)

The end of this article, says it all!

In many ways, the problems of modem health care mirror the same transitional difficulties other industries have experienced in the last decade. Market principles dictate standardization and quantification. Costs, in order to be controlled, must be identified, categorized and limited. This methodology may work efficiently with commodities, but more and more physicians and nurses are realizing that it is fraught with pitfalls when applied to human beings.

Medicine is as much art as science, and art by committee cannot, by its very definition, approach the quality that can be attained when individual genius is combined with inspiration.

Human biology has as many variations as there are humans. Whenever systems developed to process commodities with a finite number of variations are applied to a commodity which has infinite variations, a percentage of that product will be lost in the form of spoilage during processing. It is considered an inevitable and fixed cost, built into the system. This irreconcilable collision of philosophies lies at the heart of the for-profit health care controversy.