Opinion Polls: Delphi's Polling Place
Hosted by Showtalk
Opinion polls on all subjects. Opinions? Heck yes, we have opinions - but we're *always* nice about it, even when ours are diametrically opposed to yours. Register your vote today!
- 5002
MEMBERS - 130136
MESSAGES - 8
POSTS TODAY
Discussions
Political Corruption The Serious You: How Current Events Affect You
Started 5/9/22 by WALTER784; 100913 views.
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-14
Top U.S. “Non-Profit” Hospitals & CEOs Racked Up Huge Pandemic Profits
The top 20 hospitals pocketed $23 billion in Covid-aid from taxpayers. They profited from the pandemic while ignoring price transparency rules. Patient costs soared while life expectancy plummeted.
ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI
2023/05/11
OpenTheBooks.com auditors investigated America’s healthcare system and found so-called “non-profit” hospitals and their CEOs are getting richer while the American people are getting sicker and poorer.
Topline
The 20 largest non-profit hospitals in the country continued making massive profits while their cumulative net assets soared to $324.3 billion in 2021 from $200.6 billion in 2018. The year 2021 is the latest year available for cross-comparison purposes.
Those hospital systems received congressional Covid bailouts of $23 billion and only two providers partially paid their Covid bailout back.
Meanwhile, hospital executives racked up Wall Street-sized compensation packages which frequently exceeded $10 million per year. For example, the CEO at Ascension Healthcare based in St. Louis, Missouri made $13 million in 2021 – with three-year pay exceeding $22 million.
Furthermore, American life expectancy during this period sharply declined by a staggering 2.5 years from 2019 through 2022. While “comparable country averages” rebounded from a Covid-related drop in 2021, the U.S. continued declining in life expectancy.
Yet, the cost of health care is still astronomically high, as the average family paid $22,463 in health insurance premiums in 2022. That does not include out-of-pocket costs like co-pays and deductibles, which can be thousands more.
This has led to medical debt for about 100 million Americans.
In 2020, the Trump administration issued, and the Biden administration finalized (January 2021) a healthcare transparency rule – to spur market competition and inform patients.
Yet, two years after the rule took effect, an independent audit found that nearly three-quarters of hospitals in the country were not complying— flouting the mandate that prices be posted clearly and comprehensively.
GRAPHIC: CARES Act and ARPA provided big bailouts for wealthy non-profit hospitals during the Covid-pandemic.
Big Numbers
The 20 largest non-profit hospital systems saw their combined net assets soar 62 percent, or $124 billion, in the three years to 2021. You -- the U.S. taxpayer -- funded rocket ride. Examples:
The world-famous Mayo Clinic: Astounding 92 percent jump to $17.7 billion in 2021 from $9.2 billion in 2018.
Cleveland Clinic Health System: Up 60 percent to $15.6 billion in 2021.
Intermountain Healthcare: Up 63 percent to $11.6 billion. Tellingly, Colorado Governor Jared Polis had earlier cited Colorado hospitals for ‘non-profit profiteering.’
Northwestern Medicine: Up 43 percent to 11.9 billion.
Indiana University Health System: Up 47 percent to $10.3 billion from $7 billion in 2018.
Yet, not one of these systems complied fully with U.S. government price transparency rules, according to a key health care watchdog.
Crucial Quote
“This blatant obfuscation of prices and flouting of the rule demonstrates that implementation and enforcement efforts must be rigorously examined and markedly strengthened to improve compliance, enable technology innovators to parse the pricing data, and empower American consumers with upfront prices,” Patient Rights Advocate (PRA), in its February 2023 report.
PRA, a nonprofit fighting for systemwide healthcare price transparency, reviewed the websites of 2,000 U.S. hospitals, focusing on the nations’ largest health systems. In February 2023, the group found that under 25-percent were in complete compliance. In August 2022, PRA found only 16-percent of hospitals were compliant.
Yet only four hospitals have been fined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid – the federal agency responsible for creating and enforcing health and sa
...[Message truncated]
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-14
Previously, they banned many of Tucker Carlson's videos...
Now Youtube seems to ban Hannity's videos.
They ban things that look bad for the Democrats even though what's reported is true!!!
FWIW
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-14
Court Hearing Set for Lawsuit over California Sec of State’s Censorship of Judicial Watch YouTube Election Integrity Video Just Before 2020 Election
MAY 04, 2023
JUDICIAL WATCH
Updated 5/9/23 to reflect time change by the court.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong will hold a hearing on Thursday, May 11, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. PT on a Motion to Dismiss brought by the California Secretary of State in the lawsuit Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Shirley Weber, in her official capacity as Secretary of State of the State of California (No. 2:22-cv-06894)
Date: Thursday, May 11, 2023
Time: 9:00 a.m. PT (12 p.m. ET)
Location: U.S. District Court, Central District of California Western Division,
350 W 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012,
Courtroom 8B, Eighth Floor
The lawsuit states that the California Office of Elections Cybersecurity, which Secretary of State Shirley Weber oversees, unlawfully caused YouTube to remove Judicial Watch’s election integrity video on September 25, 2020. Specifically, Judicial Watch lawyers argue that the California Secretary of State violated Judicial Watch’s First Amendment right by:
misus[ing] her authority under [California Election Code Sec. 10.5] with the intention to interfere with [Judicial Watch’s] speech by monitoring [its] speech on social media, falsely assessing [its] speech as misleading, ignoring an express limitation on her authority while giving an overly broad interpretation to other authority, and using her close working relationship with and “dedicated pathways” at YouTube to have [Judicial Watch’s] video removed within approximately 24 hours.
At the time the complaint against Weber was filed, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, “Smoking gun documents show California government officials, who were being advised by the Biden campaign PR operation, caused YouTube to censor a key Judicial Watch video just before the 2020 election. This egregious government censorship and election interference violated Judicial Watch’s civil rights, and our lawsuit aims to stop and expose the growing corruption of leftist government officials colluding with Big Tech allies to attack the free speech rights of Americans.”
“California government officials don’t have the right to censor any American, especially on sensitive election integrity debates just before a presidential election. California’s censorship of Judicial Watch is a violation of the First Amendment, pure and simple,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other direct litigation, Judicial Watch continues to investigate and litigate the broad range of censorship being conducted by the Biden administration and its fellow travelers within state and local governments.
On February 28 of this year, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department Homeland Security (DHS) for records showing collusion between federal agencies and social media to censor and suppress free speech (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security(No. 1:23-cv-00552)).
Also in February 2023, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against DHS for records of communication related to the work of the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) that could detail coordinated censorship activities (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:23-cv-00384)). “Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton explained why the lawsuit was filed: “The Elon Musk ‘Twitter Files’ are the tip of the iceberg, as the federal government ran a massive, secret censorship op against the American people. That the DHS is hiding these censorship records in violation of FOIA law shows the agency still has something to hide.”
On January 13, 2023, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for communications and records of the Surgeon General’s Communications Director’s contact with social media companies regarding COVID-19 vaccines (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:23-cv-00113)). At the time of the filing, Fitton said, “Biden’s Surgeon General is abusing his office to pressure Big Tech companies to censor Americans. This lawsuit aims to uncover the details of this government attack on the First Amendment.”
On January 11, 2023, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for records of communications between the Federal B
...[Message truncated]
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-14
Yep, but they also have to sue to get otherwise FOIA information for free.
FWIW
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-15
And once they gain access to that sued information, they turn it over to our Republicans who have been seeking to gain access to that same intel which has been hidden from them.
It's totally biased and unfair to say the least.
FWIW
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-15
It should have been given to investigators under FIOA without subpoenas or lawsuits though.
Why can't they just raid the place for the documents like they did at Mar a Lago?
FWIW
TOP