Grassley Wants Non-Profit Accountability

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

Sen. Charles Grassley is demanding that non-profit hospitals provide more unreimbursed medical care for poor patients, or risk losing their tax exempt status. What breath-taking hypocrisy! The same Republicans who adamantly refuse to provide national health insurance want to blame non-profit hospitals for not doing more to clean up the God-awful mess that Congress allows to keep festering.

The overwhelming majority of hospitals in America (more than 80%) are non-profit, and those that exist in inner cities with higher concentrations of working poor (and uninsured) patients, are almost all losing money every year. Some are losing tens of millions of dollars.

The problem with health care in malpractice awards and it's not a lack of caring by inner city hospitals. And Grassley knows that perfectly well.

http://grassley.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=4921&Month=5&Year=2005">Grassley Press Release

[redphish]

1. Standard repuke strategy #1-b... deflect blame.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

2. Thank goodness "accountability" is one of their core values...

Creeps!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. damn-straight! Let's fix these tax problems w/ non-profits. 20 yrs from

now, when we are done, we can go after big corporations that are abusing their tax situation.
Trust us. We are putting our ducks in a roe.

[SPKrazy]

4. No Shit, He Must Be Trying To Run The Non Profits Out Of Business! (Frist)

Look and see if Bill Frist's family is backing his campaign so that for profit hospitals can buy up the non-profits and own us all. (Frist's family is HCA, Health Care Of America, the largest for profit chain of hospitals in the country)

[Laelth]

5. Well, yes and no.

Hypocrisy, yes.

Need socialized medicine, yes.

Malpractice awards the cause of all the misery in the health care system, no.

Georgia passed sweeping malpractice immunity for medical providers last year. The cost of malpractice insurance did not go down significantly. Insurance companies made record profits. The state of Georgia was left picking up the tab for a lot of wards created by medical malpractice who could not get a recovery from the insurance companies.

Don't buy the insurance lobby's propaganda, please. Yes, it's easy to hate lawyers (until you need one), but think about exactly whose interests are served by creating a climate in which lawyers are hated and blamed for everything. It has benefited the insurance industry a lot.

-Laelth

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

7. Had a bill in WI to limit malpractice awards

I wrote to governor suggesting he veto it (again). I don't have a problem with capping non-economic damages, per se, but the problem really lies with the small minority of doctors who create the majority of malpractice claims. They're really booted from the professional be state medical boards, so they're free to keep botching diagnoses. The first consideration should be, does this legislation protect the life and health of the patient?

[rurallib]

6. Grassley is a special kind of fucking idiot!!! And he's my senator

GODDAMNIT

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

8. How to you get Grassley and Harkin?

Are Iowans bi-polar or something?

[rurallib]

9. Strange isn't it?

Iowans are fooled that Grassley is conservative. He is just another neo-con. See I think most Iowans are frugal (hence Grassley) yet socially liberal in a 'let me be' kind of way (ergo Harkin).