When the University of Miami Health System “went viral” on social media, it was for all the wrong reasons.
A hospital executive posted a video celebrating their newly remodeled 16,000-square-foot lobby as the “definition of FIRST CLASS.” The post showed off marble floors, a grand piano, and a massive digital screen for abstract art.
One commenter said it looked like an Apple store. However, as many were quick to point out, the hospital gets government funding and is tax-exempt, meaning taxpayers subsidized the grandiose remodel.
The University of Miami hospital is a textbook example of how taxpayer support for healthcare programs is misused and abused. While millions of Americans struggle to afford basic healthcare, subsidized nonprofit hospitals spend critical resources on their own version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
The lobby rebuild is just one piece of the University of Miami Health System’s extravagance. The nonprofit pays some executives multi-million dollar salaries, and it even spent big on afancy expansionin Abu Dhabi!
Hospitals like the one at the University of Miami are subsidized in all kinds of ways by taxpayers. They get government grants, bill Medicare and Medicaid, and benefit from tax-exempt status. They also rake in millions from lesser-known programs, like federal 340B drug purchasing.
The 340B program was created in 1992 to restore drug discounts for Medicaid providers, but an expansion during the Obama administration has made it a source of windfall profits for big hospitals. With no requirement to pass savings on to patients or their insurers, hospitals can opt for more expensive drugs and reapbigger profits.
At the University of Miami hospital, the subsidies and profits pay for lavish lobbies, facilities in Abu Dhabi, and massive salaries. Meanwhile, the consequences of misguided healthcare priorities are not just wasted funds; they can be harmful for patients.
The University of Miami used to run the second largest organ transplant center in the nation. But after “years of unsafe practices, poor training, chronic underperformance, understaffing, and paperwork errors,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is in the process ofshutting it down.
In one case, a clerical error left a donated heart unused. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy noted that the transplant center’s failings were “directly tied to patient harm.”
Source: VidNews » Feed
