Copyright 1999 Times Publishing Company
St.
Petersburg Times
November 16, 1999, Tuesday, 0 South Pinellas
Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; COLUMNS; Correction; Pg.
15A
LENGTH: 731 words
HEADLINE: Bayfront treats retirees despicably
BYLINE: MARTIN DYCKMAN
BODY:
"Dirty trick," as 82-year-old Edith Campbell put it, seems almost
too polite a description of how Bayfront Medical Center has terminated medical
benefits for its retirees and their spouses.
The word that comes to my
mind is "despicable."
Pick any word you like, but please call
Bayfront at (727) 823-1234 and share it with Sue Brody, the administrator. That
will do more good than anything the media might do.
The decision applies
not just to current workers, who were put on notice last year but to people
already retired. They had spent years, if not their entire working lifetimes, at
the hospital in the expectation of a dignified old age. Unlike those still on
the job, most can't go looking for another employer who might treat them better.
Nor can they go back and put money aside to cushion the blow. Out of a meager $
1,360 in pension and Social Security, how is a retired nurse such as Campbell
suddenly to absorb $ 600 a month in pharmaceutical costs?
Though we've
come to expect such corporate callousness in our supposedly "kinder,
gentler" America, Bayfront's excuses, as reported by my colleague Kris
Hundley, were notably brazen.
You'd expect administrators to say that
the hospital, having lost $ 5.2-million last year, could no longer afford
over-65 medical benefits.
But no, administrators say it's not the money.
Rather, it's because none of the other hospitals in the BayCare health system,
which Bayfront joined two years ago, offer retiree health benefits. It would
cost too much to extend them to everyone. And of course no law prevents Bayfront
from doing what it did.
In other words, the retirees are being
sacrificed to ruthless consistency, not necessity. Necessity may compel reducing
Bayfront's prospective benefits to the levels of its new partners, but it is
neither necessary nor logical to take benefits away from Bayfront retirees who
already had earned them. Surely none of the other hospitals' retirees would
expect that. Federal law wouldn't let Bayfront repeal pensions, but it
regrettably does not vest retirees with similar rights to health care.
Bayfront would be more credible to cry poor. It's easy, though, to see
why they might not want to. Among other things, it would invite comparison with
the compensation of BayCare head Frank Murphy, who got $ 554,144 in 1997, and
the $ 300,000-plus Brody will get this year as chief executive of Bayfront-St.
Anthony's. Retiree health care was costing Bayfront only $ 340,000 a year,
which would have been swiftly self-limiting if only those already retired were
kept on.
It could reasonably occur to prospective patients to ask what
kind of care strangers might expect from a hospital that would treat its own
elders in such a way.
Remember the phone number: (727) 823-1234.
If you're a retiree and have to ask what your medicine costs, chances
are high you can't afford it. One in four Americans older than 65 pay at least $
500 a year of their own money for pharmaceuticals and 12 percent pay more than $
1,000. The price-gouging has left seniors vulnerable to Medicare HMOs that
enticed them with prescription benefits that turned sour when costs rose.
But Congress hasn't budged, not even to apply Medicare's potential
purchasing clout as President Clinton has proposed.
An instructive side
issue is Schering-Plough's massive campaign to win a patent
extension past 2002 for its pricey and wildly profitable anti-allergy
drug Claritin. The game is to write something into one of the
last-minute budget bills to empower (and by inference, require) the
Patent Office to grant a three-year extension.
Florida Sen. Connie Mack supports the company, as does his would-be successor
Rep. Bill McCollum.
Equities aside, Schering-Plough's tactics are legal
but obscene. It is spending $ 4-million a year on lobbyists including Senate
Minority Leader Tom Daschle's wife and Al Gore confidant Peter Knight. It has
contributed $ 923,000 in political party "soft money" since 1992 and has
made its corporate aircraft available at less than cost to Senate Majority
Leader Trent Lott, a frequent flier, and other pols.
If that's what one
drug is worth, imagine what the pharmaceuticals will spend
collectively to preserve their status as the nation's most profitable industry.
CORRECTION: Rep. George Albright of Ocala is a Republican. Sunday's
column misidentified him.
LOAD-DATE: November
16, 1999 
