Managed care and the onslaught of privatization of health care in the country are setting the pace up on the Hill. The insurance and banking industries are getting more than just a little help from Washington.
There is just no way to tell how many hospital conglomerates exist. They obey the ethics and morals of corporate USAmerica and with their interlocking directorates and mergers and acquisitions, they are filtering down to a very few as we speak. For openers, the is Amerigroup. Listed last year among the very top on the Fortune 500.Its list includes the Blues, Cigna, WellPoint and Humana, a multibillion health care empire in its own right. Humana's income rises in the double digits every year.
These empires do get their fair share of Congress' ears. Their lobby is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Sometimes, they show their oats so hubristically that you might think they'd be embarrassed. No such thing.
How about having an "owner" of what my be the largest chain of for- profit hospitals in the country avoid the middle man, the lobby, and just put himself right smack in the middle of the US Senate? Howe about his getting nominated and elected by his peers as the majority leader, with control over virtually every bill and piece of legislation that gets to the floor for a debate and vote? Now that would be something! And that is exactly how it is.
The Heathcare Company (HCA) changed its name in May 2000 from Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation in the wake of its tainted image as a party of the largest healthcare fraud in US history and its efforts to extricate itself from the odor.
HCA was originally the name of the company founded by the Tennessee Frist family in 1968. In 1994, Columbia, another health care giant, acquired HCA for seven and a half billion dollars. Some of the mephitic allegations stemmed from before that acquisition.
The head HCA honcho was Thomas Frist, Sr. Second in command was his number one heir, Thomas, Junior and guess who was numero duo-none other then Republican majority leader Bill Frist, MD. Yes, that Bill Frist. With pun intended, one political reporter called this set up health care Frist aid.
It was even Patricia Frist, Bill's sister-in-law, who was also politically attached to the right (read: Right wing) people in the industry. She became a one-woman lobby in her own right, spending lavishly over the years. She made the Mother Jones top 400 contributor list consistently by giving over 100 thousand dollars in soft money to the GOP national committee. HCA kicked in another 400 grand for the 1996 campaign, plus individual family members adding to the swill. Whereas Thomas Sr and Junior have a portfolio that is varied, Bill has more or less confined his equities, reporting that thirteen million of his reported net worth of 20 million is in HCA stock. Talk about special interests. When queried about this conflict of interest at a press conference, Senator Doctor Frist said he was being honest and he insisted he was promoting competition in the field. Enough said. Like his sister in law, he then walked out of the room.
What has been happening up on he Hill these past years? Frist is an outspoken advocate of Medicare options, meaning that managed care gets more and more federal reimbursements for every patient enrolled. With another noted family scion, Democrat from WVa Jay Rockefeller, they teamed up to get more and more for Medicare HMOs, all filtering down to HCA profits.
Doctor Frist has rarely gone up against orders coming down from the Oval Office. He did so this last summer with his endorsement of stem cell research. I guess the doctor in him took over. But when the Bush cabal asks rarely for legislation that would negatively affect the HMO Medicare profits (read: HCA), Bill Frist balks, much to the chagrin of the White House. Rule of the day-no one touches HCA profits and the Frist portfolio. Frist aid to the rescue.
When an accounting office audit found a five percent overdraft for HCA payouts, Frist waved it off and played the competition card again. He said it was all good for the country. End of story.
--Don Sloan is assistant editor of Political Affairs and may be reached at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net. This article is exerpted from his upcoming book with Robin Feman, Practicing Medicine Without a License: The Hostile Corporate Takeover of Healthcare in America.
