------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 9, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
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 Washington 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. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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