Source: Other Words
The holy mantra of health professionals was coined about 2,500 years ago by the Greek physician Hippocrates: “Do no harm.”
Of course, that was before corporate healthcare took charge and asserted a new guiding ethic: “Jack up profits.”
Putting this in practice, America’s largest and richest hospital chains rushed to the front of the COVID-19 bailout line this spring to pull $15 billion from the government’s emergency fund. They pocketed the taxpayers’ money despite sitting on tens of billions of dollars of their own cash reserves.
But hold your nose, for it gets much stinkier.
The bailout was intended to keep hospital workers on the job. Yet the wealthiest chains have hit nurses, janitors, and other crucial frontline staffers with layoffs, pay cuts, and deadly shortages of protective gear.
For example, HCA, the $36-billion a-year health care behemoth that’s wallowing in profits, snatched a billion-dollar taxpayer bailout for itself, then demanded hospital staffers accept wage freezes and the elimination of company pension payments… or have thousands of jobs eliminated.
However, in a public show of compassion, HCA’s chief executive Samuel Hazen donated two months of his $1.4 million salary to an employee support fund. Magnanimous? Deceptive is more like it.
The trick is that a CEO’s “salary” is a miniscule part of total pay. Hazen’s annual bonus, stock payouts, and other compensation will raise his actual pay to almost $27 million.
So his donation is less than 1 percent of his pay, and he almost certainly will write that off his income taxes. That means we taxpayers — including the nurses and others he’s knocking down — not only underwrite his fat take-home pay, but we also subsidize his face-saving philanthropic gimmick.
What we have here is a raging virus of executive suite greed doing deeper damage to our society than COVID-19 ever could.
Jim Hightower has been described as that rarest of species: "A visionary with horse sense and a leader with a sense of humor." Today, Hightower is one of the most respected "outside Washington" leaders in the United States. Author, radio commentator and host, public speaker and political sparkplug, this Texan has spent more than two decades battling Washington and Wall Street on behalf of consumers, children, working families, environmentalists, small business and just-plain-folks. Right out of college, Hightower went to work as a legislative aide to Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, a tireless liberal/populist stalwart in a cranky, often conservative state. In the early 1970s he headed up the Agribusiness Accountability Project, writing several books and testifying to Congress about the human costs of corporate profiteering and the value of sustainable, healthy, cooperative farming. From 1977 to 1979, he edited the Texas Observer, a thorn in the side of Texas Neanderthal politicians and a hotbed of first-rate journalism. In 1982, Hightower was elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner and then re-elected in 1986. The statewide post gave him a chance to fight for the kinds of policy and regulatory initiatives on behalf of family farmers and consumers he had long advocated. It also gave him visibility in national political circles, where Hightower became a prominent supporter of the Rainbow insurgencies within the Democratic Party in the 1984 and 1988 elections. In 1997 Hightower released a new book, There`s Nothing In The Middle Of The Road But Yellow Stripes And Dead Armadillos. Hightower continues to produce his highly popular radio commentaries and to speak to groups across the country. His newest venture is a monthly action-newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown, which will provide his unique populist insights into the shenanigans of Washington and Wall Street -- offering subscribers timely information, arguments and language to use in battling the forces of ignorance and arrogance. HIGHTOWER RADIO: Live from the Chat & Chew, a radio call-in show, debuted Labor Day, 1996, and continues to be a success with over 70 affiliates nationwide. This show includes a live audience, musicians, guests, and callers with a progressive populist perspective unheard anywhere else on the airwaves. Updates and more details about Hightower and his projects can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jimhightower.com.
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