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Pipe dream? Obamacare
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KGB-NP



Joined: 25 Jul 2001
Posts: 2856

PostPosted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 6:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cgoudie1 wrote:
And here I thought the creater of the Muppets was Jim Henson. ;*)

-Craig

reinerehlers wrote:
Boggsman,
I rarely ever get sick, injuries that's another story, a sore throat for over a week straight is a sign for concern. I don't want to end up like Rick Hanson AKA Muppets creator. I think all my laughing while posting yesterday probably didn't help either.


LOL! You got me dude!
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 9:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr. Fick-shun wrote:

...not to mention the VA doc who signed my death warrant. I'm STILL filing complaints against that SOB, in the hope of saving others' lives.



Post his name and address so we can send him a cold beer.


Laughing Laughing Laughing

.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 11:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's nice to put occasional nuggets in the barrels of horseshit that gets posted. Some sincere folks on the right have asked what can be done to control the cost of health care without diminishing its value. My wife volunteers at Alta Bates Hospital--that's right, she works for free. She told me that the pay for the CEO was ridiculous. According to the Chronicle, she is right:

Quote:
When it comes to paychecks, there are some pretty hefty ones on both sides of the fight between health care giant Sutter Health and its hospital nurses.

According to Sutter pay records, 20 nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Centers in Oakland and Berkeley pulled in between $200,000 and $291,000 last year, thanks in part to overtime - way above the $136,000 average pay for the centers' 1,800 nurses.

What's more, of the highest-paid nurses, five received more than $100,000 apiece in stand-by pay - just to be on call.

But if you want to see some really hefty paychecks, look at the ones going to Sutter Health execs.


Records that the company filed with the Internal Revenue Service in 2009 show that 20 Sutter Health bosses were paid more than $1 million. Topping the list, at nearly $4 million, was company CEO Pat Fry.

Both sides are more interested in pointing the finger than talking about their own pay.


It is certain, from an interesting posting earlier, that you don't have to pay executives $4 million, or nurses over $200,000, to get quality health care. But the rabid right can see nothing wrong with their for-profit model.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 11:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting info, but doesn't it just confirm how far off the norm California is and why it is so expensive to live there.

National averages for pay would be a better representation of what health care workers are being paid. There is also a wide range of nursing skills and titles, and some do make a bundle, but trying to make a point with extreme examples just doesn't fly. There are millions of examples of highly/overpaid executives in all industries, so what's new?

The below numbers are for large hospitals and would go down significantly if all hospitals were included.

Quote:

The Average Salary of a CEO of a Large Hospital - In its 2011 healthcare compensation survey, consulting firm Integrated Healthcare Strategies found that CEOs of independent hospitals averaged a base income of $482,300 per year, and $539,200 after bonuses. In independent healthcare systems, the average base salary was $687,900 and total compensation was $861,500. For comparison purposes, the survey also provided median salaries of $467,500 for hospital CEOs and $649,900 for health system CEOs. With bonuses, those totals increased to $496,400 and $790,100 respectively. A median is the point at which half of the respondents earn less, and half earn more. A broad gap between median and average indicates a few high earners skewing the group's average upward.

from:[url] http://work.chron.com/average-salary-ceo-large-hospital-3693.html[/url]

Quote:
Registered Nurse Salary Outlook

The BLS reports the median annual wage for a registered nurse was $65,950 in 2011. The best-paid 10 percent of RNs made more than $96,630, while the bottom 10 percent earned less than $44,970. The highest wages are reserved for personal care nurses, or those working for private-sector pharmaceutical or medical-device manufacturers. By location, the highest-paid positions are clustered in the metropolitan areas of northern California, including municipalities in and around San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco.

From: http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/salary
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 12:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno--do these statistics combine for-profit hospitals with non-profit and government owned? I tend to think that the for-profit hospitals drive the pay curve for the others. I could be proved wrong, but it would take some good statistical work.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 1:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Don't like the numbers - question the source - Mac at work.

No, I don't know if the statistics do or do not include all hospitals, for profit, government or non-profit, but in these kinds of surveys, if not specifically broken out, I would assume it includes all hospitals. Do the for-profits drive up the costs? I don't know, but I doubt there is much difference. No one has to go to a for-profit hospital if they don't want to if they think they are more expensive. The insurance companies don't seem to cut out for-profits, which might be the case if they were more expensive, but who knows, maybe they do.

Anyway, the point is that your tale of doom and gloom with the very limited numbers from your unidentified source are meaningless, except that it helps us understand why California is in such a mess. Interesting that my numbers also identified Calif. as a source for skewed numbers.

Yes, I know, Calif. is digging out of the hole with one year in the black, but it's a big hole.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 1:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

techno900,

Your 16:45 post was excellent.

It's interesting that nurses make a pretty good wage when viewed in the light of the national median income for a family, especially if there is only one wage earner in the family. While one must have the interest, education and the right range of attributes to be a good nurse, but I think that it would be a great career to focus on today. With all the discussion about needing more doctors to fulfill the demand for doctors under the ACA, seems that more specialized nurses would follow that demand line, particularly in the area of primary care.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 1:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The ACA's 2000+ pages and the 10,000 pages of new regulations it spawned are biting the administration in the ass in yet another way. Corporations are starting to use an ACA loophole to skirt its attempt to force healthy people to buy Cadillac policies they don't want. Google "Bare-Bones Health Plans Survive Through Quirk in Law" for details, such as these policies' end run around the ACA's silly one-size-fits-all paradigm and their viability past 2014.

Does the damn government really think it can outsmart countless thousands of highly motivated corporate CEOs and lawyers? How's that arrogant opinion working in the case of General Electric?
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 1:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In independent health systems the average was $861K ?
That means the average CEO is $139K short in his check but most guys above him didn't have that problem.

In some hospitals in the worse places there are 19 millionaire execs like this in one hospital alone who are not even the CEO?

Every example here is troubling to me.

Those rankings tell the story why we need health care reform. Maybe the ACA isn't the best but those who want to go back are mislead.
I am still hoping critics will join others in fixing the problems with well informed solutions, one little part at a time.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 1:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno--you are usually better than this:

Quote:
Don't like the numbers - question the source - Mac at work.


I didn't question your source, I asked what it means. I'll be snide back, but with a purpose. Statistical analysis of trends involves separating different populations. If you lump them together, you destroy the ability of the data to tell you anything. In flood analysis, if you mix a pineapple express with an Alaskan storm, you undermine the ability of the resultant data set to tell you anything about unusual storms. Here all I asked was whether or not the three populations of hospital management--for profit, non-profit, and government sponsored, had been mixed.

If you had actually read it, I questioned the pay for nurses as well. My underlying assumption here, which you are free to rebut, is that the health care industry is a heavily cartelized industry which drives the prices up.

Reasoned debate means responding to points.

I see the same trends in higher management in hospitals that I do in corporations and governments--use the highest possible pay of someone out there in a remotely comparable job and argue that you deserve a raise. So in the case of the CEO of the for profit Alta Bates, you get a $4 million salary--and labor war with the nurses.

With that said, the top guy at Kaiser, George Halvorsen, makes a base pay of $1.2 million, but his net pay in 2011 was $7.9 million. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20130810/MAGAZINE/308109991

The broader question I am asking is the degree to which top executive pay, and nursing overtime, are driving costs up. Here my assumption is that top executives deserve really high pay if they end up figuring out how to run their operations, whether public or private, more efficiently. That doesn't appear to be the case with the existing health care system.
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