During the Pandemic Does It Make Sense To Decrease Wages of Hospital Personnel?

CBS News reported last week that hospitals have been cutting the pay of physicians and reducing nursing and other staff in their Emergency Rooms in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.  In fact there are many reports from all across our nation of wage cuts for medical staff in hospitals and group medical practices just at the time when they are most needed, the risk is high, the demand is critical, and they are being honored by the public as heroes for their commitment, Herculean efforts and life-saving skills.

In what Alice in Wonderland world does that make any sense?

By way of contrast a news article in today’s Washington Post reported that the African nation of Ghana, where Covid-19 is becoming a serious problem, announced an immediate 50% increase in wages for medical personnel, care for any staff who acquire the disease, and death benefits.

Why do we have this absurd difference in the treatment of essential personnel? 

There is an explanation.  Most hospitals today are owned by corporations and operate as business entities where profitability is the goal even in hospitals that maintain the fiction that they operate as not-for-profit entities.  Some hospitals [including my local hospital in Florida that is owned by Cleveland Clinic] contract the operation of their ER to for-profit management companies that employ physicians the way Walmart hires workers and treats them comparably.  Hospitals are “losing” money because highly profitable elective procedures have been postponed and treating those who need medical care in the ER is unprofitable.

 

Hospitals could choose to incur debt or transfer building or unrestricted funds to cover their increased operating expense, suspend executive pay during the crisis and let them volunteer, postpone the purchase of million dollar pieces of equipment, suspend construction projects temporarily, delay acquisitions for a year and focus on using those funds to increase wages rather than decrease them.

While some will argue that I have oversimplified medical services’ financial problems, which I concede have been exacerbated by Covid-19, I contend that the pandemic has brought the real issue into focus—the profit motive that underlies almost everything in medicine.  Hospitals want to build bigger, better, fancier.  Medical equipment is highly profitable.  Prescription drug prices are more expensive than their real costs warrant.  Personnel management companies want a piece of medical personnel wages.  Hospital managers are driven by profits and high salaries.  Insurance companies pay for some of the direct costs but they want a piece of every service.  Every part of the system is driven by a profit motive that is inappropriate in what--I believe--should be a service industry.

At the end of the day it depends on whether the primary driving purpose behind physician and hospital services is to save lives and serve people or to make a profit for owners and managers.  That will determine the priorities, how the money flows and who benefits from providing medical services.

Trump Golfs While Pandemic Rages

No need for comment [credit Twitter]

Stolen Gilgamesh Tablets Recovered at Bible Museum

Anyone concerned with antiquities, including ancient historians and museum curators in particular, are rightly concerned about the trade in stolen artifacts from the ancient world.  Sites from Egypt to Mesopotamia have been looted regularly in modern times to sell stolen goods to private collectors and major museums, and in ancient times to obtain gold and precious jewels   After the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government a number of museums in Iraq were looted and some valuable statuary was destroyed by Muslim fundamentalists.

That is why the US government has filed suit against the Hobby Lobby seeking to return stolen tablets containing part of the story of Gilgamesh to the Iraqi government.  [Read the interesting story here.]  The Hobby Lobby’s owners are donors to extreme right-wing causes and political action groups who established the Bible Museum in Washington, DC and have been involved in a number of prior instances of dealing with dealers of ill repute to obtain artifacts for their museum.

Is Trump Challenging Mother Nature To A Duel?

Thomas L Friedman’s brilliant article outlines a dangerous flaw in Trump’s reopen strategy:

I try to ground all my thoughts on how to deal with this pandemic in the logic of Mother Nature and the laws of natural systems. If you don’t — if instead you start your analysis with politics or ideology, or the fact that you’re just tired of being locked down so what the hell, let’s throw back a few with the gang at the local bar and the virus be damned — you’re actually challenging Mother Nature to a duel….

All that registers, all that she rewards, is one thing: adaptation. She doesn’t reward the richest or the strongest or the smartest of the species. She rewards the most adaptive. They get to pass along their DNA….

For all these reasons it’s clear, or should be, that the holy grail every nation needs to be looking for is what Dr. David Katz, a public health expert, argued from the beginning of this crisis: a “sustainable strategy of total harm minimization.” That means a strategy that would save as many lives and as many livelihoods as possible at the same time….

We need to reopen and we need to adapt, but in ways that honor Mother Nature’s logic, not in ways that court a second wave — not in ways that challenge Mother Nature to a duel. That is not smart. Because she hasn’t lost a duel in 4.5 billion years.

Read the whole article in The New York Times [here]

Is Florida Manipulating Covid-19 Data?

CNN reported today that Florida and Georgia, both Republican-controlled states that seem eager to do Trump’s bidding by reopening their states to business before the data indicates that Covid-19 is sufficiently contained, may be manipulating their data to conceal some information from the public.  If true, and reports show that is likely, it is endangering the public by making it seem safer to open than it actually is. [see the report here.]

The most serious claim is that the manager of Florida’s well-respected Covid-19 data reporting website was removed from her job and apparently terminated for insubordination because she refused to change data that conflicted with Governor Ron DeSantis’ positive claims that the State was ready to fully reopen.  [See the story here.]  DeSantis is an altar boy and water carrier for Trump who has shown he is willing to support Trump’s message that the economy should be opened without regard to its consequences to help his reelection campaign.

Opening Up Safely

After being confined to our homes for so long as our economy suffered, our personal finances were devastated, our hopes for graduation and our entry to the world of work were dashed,  our health care workers and our elderly grandparents and occasionally our younger friends were killed, we are now beginning to experience the freedom of leaving our homes and venturing out again into the world of work and fun.  Let us not forget the lessons learned with such patience and endurance and hardship that our safety and the safety of our friends, neighbors and relatives require us to follow diligently the protocols for safety—to wear a mask, wash our hands, keep our hands away from our face, and stay at least six feet away from others. [AGB]