A doctor for-profit leads the Senate majority
By Leslie Feinberg
Is there a doctor in the House? Well, there's one in the
Senate. And he's no Marcus Welby.
Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee officially picks up the gavel
as Republican majority leader when the GOP takes control of the
Senate in January. The mega-millionaire heart and lung
transplant surgeon is the first physician in the Senate in 50
years.
Forty of the 51-member Senate Republican Caucus elected
Frist their new leader in a reportedly unanimous voice vote
during a 45-minute conference telephone call Dec. 23.
Frist replaces Trent Lott, forced to step down after his
glowing toast to arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond was aired
publicly. Lott's nostalgia for post-confederate apartheid rule
was no secret. So who really compelled Lott to resign and why
has not been revealed. But it's evident after two weeks of
behind-the-scenes maneuvering that Bush got a Republican
majority leader he can really work with.
Frist led the Republican campaigns that took the GOP from a
minority to a majority within the millionaires' club called the
U.S. Senate. "He will be the point man for President Bush at
what could be his presidency's peak of power, with his party
commanding majorities in the House and Senate," wrote the Dec.
22 USA Today.
Although Frist's home state borders Lott's, "The main thing
that Frist represents that Lott does not represent, and what
the Bush White House wants the most, is that Frist is a
national person and a national political figure, as opposed to
being a Southern political figure," noted David Bositis, senior
political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Econo
mic Studies. (USA Today, Dec. 23)
Frist "has been mentioned for posts in the Bush
administration and even as a possible vice presidential nominee
if Dick Cheney doesn't run again. He has a solidly conservative
voting record and close ties to the Bush administration." (USA
Today, Dec. 17)
"Conservative" is an establishment pundit's euphemism for
the ideological right wing.
Sen. Frist has voted in favor of drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge and the Gulf of Mexico, school
vouchers and tax cuts for the already affluent. He has voted
against a series of NAACP-supported education amendments,
technology centers for poor and minority communities, renewable
energy, increased fuel standards for cars, bilingual education,
workplace ergonomic standards and minimum wage legislation.
In a Dec. 23 statement, Gloria Feldt, president of Planned
Parenthood Federation of America, wrote that Sen. Frist's
"rabidly anti-choice track record indicates that he marches in
lockstep with anti-choice extremists."
Now Republicans say that Frist and Bush will make health
care issues a number one priority on the Senate agenda.
Health-policy consultant Robert Laszewski told the media,
"We understand that the president is going to really stress
health care in his State of the Union speech. To have Bill
Frist backing him up is going to be a real plus." (USA Today,
Dec. 23)
"Bush has an effective new partner on health care issues,"
USA Today waxes enthusiastic.
Bill Frist, scion of a multi-billion-dollar health industry
dynasty, is as much an advocate for patient rights as Trent
Lott is an advocate for civil rights.
Frist do no harm?
Frist ran for Senate on a campaign promise to bring his
"surgical personality" to the political body: to listen,
diagnose and treat. Going into the 2002 Senate campaign he
clarified his real skills to his GOP Senate peers. He told them
he was trained "within 45 seconds to be able to cut out the
human heart."
He has proven to be skillful.
Frist has blocked patients from acquiring more rights to sue
their HMOs. He has voted against providing prescription drug
benefits for retired people, a genuine patient bill of rights
and increased global AIDS funding (107th Congress).
According to USA Today, "Frist figured in one of the final
controversies of this year's congressional session. He was the
author of a provision that blocks lawsuits by families claiming
their children's autism was caused by vaccines containing
mercury. The provision was added secretly to a bill creating a
department of homeland security, but Frist denied any
involvement." (Dec. 23)
This provision, slipped into the legislation at the 11th
hour, was a financial boon for Eli Lilly, which produces the
suspect dilutant used with vaccines.
The pharmaceutical giants have been good to Frist. In
Frist's 2000 race for Senate, they generously coughed up
$260,000 to his campaign. (Opensecrets.org)
In the same run for office, Frist also ranked as a top
senatorial recipient of donations to his war chest from
hospital and nursing homes, insurance companies, health
professionals, health services and HMOs. Other deep-pocketed
contributions came from commercial banks, real estate, security
and investment and law firms. (2000 Race Profile)
But Frist is not merely a well-lobbied politician. Like many
in Congress--Republicans and Democrats--he is dizzy from the
revolving door between the skyscrapers of corporate and banking
headquarters and the marbled halls of political power.
"Some companies hire lobbyists to work Congress. Some have
their executives lobby directly," journalist Robert Dreyfuss
explained in a 1997 article. But the Frist family "has taken it
a step further: They sent an heir to the Senate. And there,
with disturbingly little controversy, Republican Sen. Bill
Frist has co-sponsored bills that may allow his family's
company to profit from the ongoing privatization of Medicare."
(Mother Jones)
The hypocritical oath
Frist, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, never had to
sit in health care clinic waiting rooms when he was sick.
Frist's family fortune was amassed from the for-profit hospital
dynasty Columbia/HCA, that derives a large share of its
proceeds from federal health programs, Medicare and Medicaid.
(USA Today, Dec. 22)
In the year 2000 he tied for 15th place in the annual Roll
Call 50 Richest, a rough assessment of the assets of the
wealthiest Republicans and Democrats on Capital Hill by The
Business Group, based in Washington.
That year his financial disclosure forms inventoried a trust
in his name valued at between $5 and $25 million, another in
his wife's name worth more than $1 million and several trusts
in the names of his children. Sundry other holdings included
undeveloped commercial and residential land in Memphis priced
at between $500,000 and $1 million, and real estate in
Colorado, San Francisco and the Bush family's Lone Star
state.
Today, although he has nudged up a bit on the roster of the
rich, he's nowhere near the most moneyed patrician on the
gilded Hill. But in reality he sits atop a much higher crest of
capital. And Frist wields great power from that elevation.
His father, Dr. Thomas Frist Sr., was a founder of
Columbia/HCA, the country's largest chain of for-profit
hospitals. Sen. Frist disclosed in 1994 that his personal
wealth included more than $13 million in Columbia/HCA stock.
His brother Tom, who runs Columbia/HCA, was worth $950 million,
according to Forbes magazine in 2000.
Robert Dreyfuss wrote in April 1997 that Columbia/HCA was
already a $20-billion health care conglomerate that included
340 hospitals, 135 outpatient surgery centers, and 200 home
health care agencies in 38 states. (Mother Jones)
Columbia/HCA was operating 61 percent of private hospital
beds by 1997, according to a report on state legislative trends
and analysis
Columbia/HCA became known as the Pacman of the health care
marketplace for its voracious gobbling takeovers. Robert
Laszewski dubbed the health care giant the Microsoft of the
health care industry.
Union-busting tactics by management at the health care
Goliath were so egregious that in 1997 the National Labor
Relations Board--which was loath to rule against an
employer--decreed that Columbia/HCA had engaged in illegal and
unfair labor practices against nurses organizing at the
company's flagship hospital in Louisville, Ky. (AFSCME News,
April 2, 1997)
A 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article described the
aftermath of Columbia/HCA takeovers as "less charity care, the
replacement of senior health professionals with less experience
(and less expensive) workers, and the risk of lower quality
service as profit supersedes care."
Marc Gardner, former vice president of Columbia/HCA, was
more blunt. He admitted he "committed felonies every day."
(Nathannewman.org)
Gardner spilled more beans in a 1998 interview with ABC
News, in which he called the health industry empire "an
arrogant corporate culture in which meeting demands for profits
became far more important than caring for patients or obeying
the law."
He described policies that channeled illegal payments to
doctors for sending patients to Columbia hospitals and offered
monetary rewards for performing unnecessary surgeries.
(Berkeley Medical Journal, Spring 1998)
Capitalism is hazardous to your health
The same week that Frist was chosen as Senate Republican
leader, Columbia/ HCA agreed to settle a long-running health
care fraud investigation, including Medicaid billing swindles,
with the Justice Department for $880 million--far less than the
$1 billion or more that analysts had predicted. (Forbes.com,
Dec. 18)
Jamie Court, executive director of the California-based
Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, says Frist "is
going to be the poster boy for how close the Republican Party
is with corporate criminals." (USAToday.com)
True, Frist is steeped in the corporate climate of crime and
cronyism. But this is a bipartisan reality.
Both parties represent the overall interests of big business
and are paid handsomely for their efforts. Health care industry
groups, for example, distribute about two-thirds of their
campaign contributions to Republicans and about one-third to
Democrats. (opensecrets.org)
This is what capitalist democracy looks like.
Remember how all roads in the Wash ington Beltway seemed to
lead to Enron? In fact, all the major corporations and banks
have two-way express lanes to Congress and the White House.
That is where the great capitalist interests wrangle to exert
their control over the process of writing and interpreting the
laws of the land that guarantee their overall interests.
Private capitalist ownership of collectively created wealth
so dominates the body politic that it doesn't really matter in
the long run whether these elite politicians are hired or
elected. The political nomination process itself is more of an
appointment. That's how the Senate remains a virtually
lily-white male bastion of wealth and privilege.
And that's why it will take an anti-capitalist revolution
from below, rising up by the millions who are sick and tired of
exploitation and inedible campaign promises, to birth a
government of, by and for those who do the work of the world
every day.
Reprinted from the Jan. 9, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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