from the Working Life blog:
Banker/Hospital CEO Pay Up, People Not So Muchby Jonathan Tasini
Wednesday 16 of March, 2011
This is a story that cannot be retold enough and updated enough because it highlights, as much as any trend, how nothing has changed. The people suffer--while CEO pay continues to go up. The robbery continues unabated.
Let's start with the hospital sector. In New York, and I would suspect everywhere else around the country (stories please), hospital case is being cut back wherever public dollars are being spent--but hospital CEOs are doing just fine, as we learn from an article entitled "Immune to Cuts: Lofty Salaries at Hospitals":
At Bronx-Lebanon, a hospital that exists only by the grace and taxed fortunes of the people of New York State, the chief executive was paid $4.8 million in 2007 and $3.6 million in 2008, records show. At NewYork-Presbyterian, a hospital system that receives nearly half a billion dollars annually in public money, the chief executive was paid $9.8 million in 2007 and $2.8 million in 2008.
In an urgent search to cut the state’s health care costs and lift revenue, a task force came up with a plan to increase the cost of a hospital stay by $5 and to limit housekeeping services for the disabled in their homes.
One area of plump costs, however, remained undisturbed: executive suites where salaries and compensation run into the millions of dollars, even at the most financially struggling hospitals.
And...
Ms. Glick’s district includes Greenwich Village, where St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan closed last year in a blizzard of problems. “I had a hospital that existed for 160 years, and there were many issues with it,” she said. “It also had some level of poor management in its final year.”
The top 10 executives took home about $6 million that year. They may have gone out of business, but they didn’t go cheap.
There is no cry from our governor--a "Democrat"--to cap CEO pay. Nope--but he is raring to go when it comes to cutting back the services for regular people because, well, we have no money (of course, this is a phony crisis--especially if he had the balls to tax his rich campaign contributors...which he doesn't and won't). ...............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=15130