Newshoggers.com

HCR -- Hospital and Insurance CEO Compensation

Posted by John Ballard, found at Margalit Gur-Arie's place...

Highest Paid Non-Profit Hospitals CEOs in the Midwest

1. Randall O’Donnell; Children’s Mercy Hospital and Clinics; Kansas City, Missouri: $6 million 
2. Javon Bea; Mercy Health System; Janesville, Wisconsin: $4.5 million 
3. James Skogsbergh; Advocate Health Care; Oak Brook, Illinois: $4 million 
4. Dean Harrison; Northwestern Memorial Hospital; Chicago, Illinois: $3.4 million 
5. Richard Pettingill; Allina Health System; Minneapolis, Minnesota: $3.3 million
6. Joseph Swedish; Trinity Health; Novi, Michigan: $2.7 million 
7. Lowell Kruse; Heartland Regional Medical Center; St. Joseph, Missouri: $2.5 million 
8. Steven Lipstein; BJC Health System; St. Louis, Missouri: $2.2 million 
9. Kevin Schoeplein; OSF Healthcare System; Peoria, Illinois: $2.2 million 
10. Thomas Sieber; Genesis Healthcare System; Zanesville, Ohio: $2.1 million 
11. Paul Pawlak; Silver Cross Hospital; Joliet, Illinois: $2 million 
12. Toby Cosgrove; Cleveland Clinic; Cleveland, Ohio: $1.9 million 
13. William Petasnick; Froedtert Memorial Hospital; Milwaukee, Wisconsin: $1.9 million 
14. Fred Manchur; Kettering Medical Center; Dayton, Ohio: $1.9 million 
15. Patrick Magnon; Children’s Memorial Hospital; Chicago, Illinois: $1.8 million 
16. Kenneth Hanover; University Hospital; Cincinnati, Ohio: $1.8 million 
17. J. Luke McGuinness; Central Dupage Hospital; Winfield, Illinois: $1.8 million 
18. Daniel Evans Jr.; Clarian Health Partners; Indianapolis, Indiana: $1.8 million 
19. James Madera; University of Chicago Medical Center; Chicago, Illinois: $1.8 million 
20. James Anderson; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; Cincinnati, Ohio: $1.8 million

http://medcitynews.com/2011/08/nonprofit-hospital-ceo-salaries-in-the-midwest-whos-on-top/

2009 Insurance Companies Total CEO Compensation 

• Aetna, Ronald A. Williams: $18,058,162
• Coventry, Allen Wise: $17,427,789 (took over from Dale Wolf)
• WellPoint, Angela Braly: $13,108,198 
• United Health, Stephen Helmsley: $8,901,916 
• Cigna, David Cordoni: $6,593,921 (took over from CEO H. Edward Hanway) 
• Cigna, H. Edward Hanway: $18,800,000 
• Humana, Michael McCallister: 6,509,452 
• Health Net, Jay Gellert: $3,643,342

http://www.healthreformwatch.com/2011/03/16/health-insurance-ceo-total-compensation-in-2009/

I don't think I need to add anything here.
Go read Margalit's great commentary regarding how this upstanding collection of professionals is gently advancing rationing care [i.e. practicing waste avoidance which is defined as withholding non-beneficial care] with no apparent sense of irony. 

(You will notice that the insurance people as a group do better than the healthcare people. 
And to put it all into a larger perspective, CEOs across the board are not far from the ten million dollar mark.  So you can put away the tissues now. )

Krugman on Fiscal Phonies

Krugman said it

Mark Thoma blogged it

Roubini retweeted it.

and John Ballard thinks it's worth reading...

Both Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney, then, are fake deficit hawks. ... Still, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney are playing to a national audience. Are Republican governors, who have to deal with real budget constraints, different? Well, there have been many claims to that effect; Mr. Christie, in particular, has been widely held up, not least by himself, as an example of a politician willing to make tough choices.

But last week we got to see him facing an actual tough choice — and aside from the yelling-at-people thing, he proved himself just another standard fiscal phony.

Here’s the story:... Mr. Christie has been touting what he calls the “Jersey comeback.” Even before his latest outburst, it was hard to see what he was talking about... Yet Mr. Christie has been adamant that ... this makes room for, you guessed it, tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Last week reality hit:... the state faces a $1.3 billion shortfall. ... New Jersey, then, is still in dire fiscal shape. So is our tough-talking governor willing to reconsider his pet tax cut? Fuhgeddaboudit. ... So much for fiscal responsibility.

Will Mr. Christie’s budget temper tantrum end speculation that he might become Mr. Romney’s running mate? I have no idea. But it really doesn’t matter: whoever Mr. Romney picks, he or she will cheerfully go along with the budget-busting, reverse Robin Hood policies that you know are coming if the former governor wins.

There's more at the link, but that's the meat of what he said. 

Twitter Catch

From John's Twitter feed...

(IMAGE) Here's how to explain Taliban/al-Qaeda/Al-Shabab to a Harry Potter fan: fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash…

— Josh Shahryar (@JShahryar) May 28, 2012

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Commentary By Ron Beasley

I love a good spy novel.  I read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré shortly after it came out in 1974 and shortly after I left the DIA.  I heard about the movie and looked forward to seeing it.  I had it in my Netflix que but but then I read this by Eric Margolis, Forget the Film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: See the BBC Original. Well I took his advice and watched the five plus hour BBC version instead.

John Le Carré's Cold War espionage trilogy, which also includes, The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, is the finest work on the world of intelligence ever written. Le Carré served in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and knows of what he writes. He masterfully captures all the bureaucratic tedium and moments of terror of spy work, its lies, double-dealing, and betrayals.

The 1976 BBC TV version of Tinker, Tailor and the sequel, Smiley's People, was the best thing I have ever seen on TV. It was perfect. Full stop. Only the BBC series I, Claudius came near it.

John Le Carré stated the BBC version was "complete" and should not be remade. I felt the same way, fearing that a remake would inevitably disappoint.

I still haven't seen the movie but after watching the 1976 BBC version I don't really see how a two hour movie could do the novel nearly as much justice as the five hour BBC series.  In addition Alec Guinness plays George Smiley and I can't really imagine anyone doing it better.  

 

The Times Are Always a-Changin

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Bob Dylan had his 71st birthday a couple of days ago.  In 1964 when he did The Times They are a-Changin they certainly were.  Protests against the war in Vietnam were on the increase and the nations youth were protesting the status quo.  It was free love, drugs and lots of wild electric guiter.  Times have continued to change in the last 48 years - sometimes forward but more often than not in the wrong direction.  

Happy Birthday Bob.

Stars and Stripes Forever for a Holiday Weekend

Posted by John

HCR -- Medical-Industrial Complex Graphic

By John Ballard

This came from Kevin, MD, one of the various health care sites I track.

After you check it out, go read the commentary at the link.

Created by: Medical Billing and Coding Certification

HCR -- Dementia Awareness

By John Ballard

This was posted this morning at the Hospice and Nursing Homes Blog. Sometimes we need reminding that the people around us may have more going on inside than they let us know. Or that we want to find out.

I can tell you that for many there is nothing going on inside. But between that place -- the empty nothingness of Eternal Now -- and where they began, they experienced months and years of transitional events. We may not be able to change the destination but we do have a responsibility as bystanders to make their journey as emotionally free of pain as possible.

Romney Foreign Policy

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The citizens of the United States are tired of war, George W Bush's wars. Given that I have some advice for the Obama campaign - forget Bain Capitol and go after Romney's foreign policy. Collin Powell gave them the talking points.

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday questioned Mitt Romney’s choice in foreign policy advisers, saying that some are so right-wing that the advice they give deserves “second thought.

“I don’t know who all of his advisers are, but I’ve seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right. And sometimes they might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought,” Powell said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

He gave the example of Romney recently saying that Russia is the “number one geopolitical foe” to the United States.

“Come on Mitt, think,” Powell said. “That isn’t the case.”

The Nation took a look at Romney's foreign policy advisors and it's pretty scary.

Yet though the candidates and their views were often hard to take seriously, their statements on foreign policy reflected a more disturbing trend in the GOP. Despite facing a war-weary public, the candidates—with the exception of Ron Paul, an antiwar libertarian, and Jon Huntsman, a moderate internationalist—positioned themselves as unapologetic war hawks. That included Mitt Romney, marginally more polished than his rivals but hardly an expert. Given Romney’s well-established penchant for flip-flopping and opportunism, it’s difficult to know what he really believes on any issue, including foreign affairs (the campaign did not respond to a request for comment). But a comprehensive review of his statements during the primary and his choice of advisers suggests a return to the hawkish, unilateral interventionism of the George W. Bush administration should he win the White House in November.

Bush retreads: 

Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you’d never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, “Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected.” On some key issues, like Iran, Romney and his team are to the right of Bush. Romney’s embrace of the neoconservative cause—even if done cynically to woo the right—could turn into a policy nightmare if he becomes president.

Yes, when it comes to foreign policy Romney even scares the Koch brothers Cato Institute.  There is every reason to believe that a Romney administration would bring more wars and more tax cuts leading to a ballooning deficit.  No body who is sane thinks that a war with Iran would be anything but a disaster.

If you liked George W Bush you will love Mitt Romney.  That would make a great bumper sticker.

 

Facebook and the Advertising Bubble

By John Ballard

Doc Searls is to the Internet what Paul McCartney or Paul Simon are to pop music. Because he's not one of those people always tooting their own horns, readers who don't know who he is, especially younger ones, can be forgiven. But make no mistake about it, when Doc Searls speaks many of the right people listen.

I first became aware of him some time ago and have been content to let him do his thing while I do mine. His "thing" if a lot more significant than mine, of course. I only rub shoulders with movers and shakers in my dreams. Here are a couple of early Doc Searls links by way of introduction. After this, you're on your own. And if you don't already know about cluetrain, you really do have a lot of reading ahead of you. (Think Buckminster Fuller -- you don't need to memorize all of Synergetics, but you risk revealing industrial size ignorance if you don't know the reference.)

Anyhow, this morning's commentary by Doc Searls looking at Facebook is a really good read. His observations of advertising in general and Facebook in particular are not only lucid (even obvious) but the wierd part is that so many otherwise smart people don't see them already. Here are a couple of snips to whet the appetite. He opens with a reference to an essay now making the rounds then quotes himself. 

One might think all this personalized advertising must be pretty good, or it wouldn’t be such a hot new business category. But that’s only if one ignores the bubbly nature of the craze, or the negative demand on the receiving end for most of advertising’s goods. In fact, the results of personalized advertising, so far, have been lousy for actual persons…

Tracking and “personalizing”—the current frontier of online advertising—probe the limits of tolerance. While harvesting mountains of data about individuals and signaling nothing obvious about their methods, tracking and personalizing together ditch one of the few noble virtues to which advertising at its best aspires: respect for the prospect’s privacy and integrity, which has long included a default assumption of anonymity.

Ask any celebrity about the price of fame and they’ll tell you: it’s anonymity. This wouldn’t be a Faustian bargain (or a bargain at all) if anonymity did not have real worth. Tracking, filtering and personalizing advertising all compromise our anonymity, even if no PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is collected. Even if these systems don’t know us by name, their hands are still in our pants…

The distance between what tracking does and what users want, expect and intend is so extreme that backlash is inevitable. The only question is how much it will damage a business that is vulnerable in the first place.

With the patience of Job he lays out some of the realities of advertising in the same way that climate change people keep pointing to another elephant or naked emperor in the room, concluding with these two wonderful paragraphs.

Here’s the thing, and why now is the time to point this out: most of those developers have a hell of a time getting laid by VCs, which on the whole have their heads stuck in the calf-cow model of the Web, and can’t imagine a way to improve the marketplace that does not require breeding yet another cow, or creating yet another ranch for dependent customers. Maybe now that the bloom is off Facebook’s rose, and the Filter Bubble is ready to burst, they can start looking at possibilities over here on the demand side.

So this post is an appeal to investors. Start thinking outside the cow, and outside the ranch. If you truly believe in free markets, then start believing in free customers, and in the development projects that make them not only free, but able to drive sales and form relationships that are worthy of the word.

A word of advice: don't scan Doc Searls carelessly. His writing style is very relaxed and it's easy to imagine his conversational tone means he's not saying much of importance. Nothing could be further from the facts. If he goes to the trouble to put up a blogpost you can be certain that what's in there is worth reading.