On Thursday, NC Political News reported the following:
Nonprofit hospital executives enriched themselves while fueling a crisis of health care affordability in North Carolina. A new analysis of hospital data finds that nonprofit hospital CEOs doubled their paychecks in less than five years — a fraction of the time previously thought. Existing research had gravely underestimated the growth of wage inequity across nonprofit hospitals.
State Treasurer Dale R. Folwell, CPA, invited researchers from the North Carolina State Health Plan for Teachers and State Employees, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy to study executive compensation across North Carolina’s nine largest hospital systems, including Atrium, Mission, Novant, UNC, Vidant, Duke, Cone, WakeMed and Wake Forest Baptist Health, as well as the Midwest system Advocate Aurora Health that merged with Atrium Health.
“This is the biggest transfer of wealth in our generation, and it’s being financed disproportionately on the backs of sick, low- and fixed-income people,” said Treasurer Folwell. “These nonprofit hospital executives have lost their mission. They are supposed to make people better, not make themselves richer.”
When North Carolina hospitals paid $1.75 billion to their top executives, chief executive officers (CEO) captured almost 20% of that pay from 2010 to 2021. Researchers also found troubling trends in hospital executive compensation during the pandemic. Frontline workers gained national recognition for their work caring for patients, but nurse and physician wages have risen far more slowly than executive pay over the past decade. Despite pleading poverty and taking $1.5 billion in taxpayer-funded COVID relief, the majority of hospital top executives did not cut their own paychecks in 2020.
I don’t ever support wage-and-price controls, but it seems as if there are a number of people whose wages have increased dramatically in recent years for no apparent reason.
The article also notes:
While hospital executives enjoyed huge raises, workers’ wages have remained largely flat over the past decade. Rising health care costs are eroding families’ upward mobility. The average worker now loses 20% of a paycheck to health care costs, and one in five North Carolinians is in debt collections for medical bills. State employees must work one week out of every month just to pay the family premium.
“This report is a wake-up call to anyone who sits on the board of a nonprofit hospital,” said Dr. Vivian Ho, James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics at Rice University. “Executives are being handsomely rewarded for earning high profits and burdening North Carolinians with medical debt, rather than guaranteeing affordable care to hard-working families that form the backbone of the economy.”
If a non-profit hospital has that much money to spend, they should use it to cut costs for its patients, which in turn will cut costs for people with medical insurance, which will give people more disposable income, which will result in economic growth for everyone. That way everyone wins.