March 25, 2008...9:09 am
WMC DOING HOSPITALS’ BIDDING
We recently learned that the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, as well as the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, has chosen to sell out its members in order to do the bidding of the major hospitals.
Both WMC and MMAC are endorsing the hospital tax proposed by Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone. If enacted, this would be approximately a 1 percent tax on hospitals’ revenue, a tax which would be passed on to patients, in order to get more “free” federal money to fund BadgerCare, the state’s program for poor families.
No one can logically explain why raising taxes is a good way to reduce health care costs, especially when those costs are being passed on to the end users of health care in the form of higher taxes. No one with any sense of logic really believes that the hospitals are simply going to eat that tax and not pass it on to the patients in the form of higher costs for services.
But the drive to get “free” federal money makes everyone lose perspective. Diamond Jim wants to use the estimated $700 million to deal with the state’s budget shortfall and the hospitals just see more money from federal taxpayers pouring into their coffers, in addition to higher Medicaid reimbursement from the state. They’re get more money than they will pay in taxes plus pass the tax on to consumers.
Now, it gets worse.
Mark Belling reports that Wheaton Franciscan, one of the state’s largest hospital chains, is pressuring its employees to contact legislators to support the hospital tax. Employees in one departments were called into a room and asked who had contacted their elected officials. When few raised their hands, the employees were chewed out and told that they had better do so and that they’d be summoned again the following week and asked to provide proof that they had in the form of the response they had received.
This is the ultimate in bullying tactics by an employer. It’s harassment by an employer. An employer keeping a list of employees who had and had not contacted their state representatives and state senators about supporting a tax increase — or any policy — that the employer wanted. The employer then intends to intimidate anyone who either had not contacted their elected officials or had expressed opposition to the tax increase.
Furthermore, the other hospitals, including Aurora, will be doing the same thing to their employees. Belling reported that some P.R. flack from Wheaton Franciscan responded and said this campaign was “voluntary.”
Yeah right. When your employer tells you that you had better do something or you will be brought into a room on a weekly basis and asked (1) if you had done it and (2) to provide proof in the form of e-mail or snail mail correspondence that you had, it can be very intimidating. Belling compared it to pressure inside companies to contribute to the United Way.
He’s right. I once worked for an employer who was a big United Way advocate. I managed to buck the pressure, since I had resolved not to contribute anything to the United Way since United Way was in the process of cutting off the Boy Scouts around the country because of the pressure of political correctness over the Boy Scouts’ policy against atheists and openly homosexual scout masters.
You can listen to Belling’s monologue here.
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