January 23, 2003
Chicago Sun-Times
Op-Ed
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist must recuse himself from health care legislation deliberations.
He comes to his new post with a record of self-interest and partiality for the corporate health care delivery system.
Frist owns $26 million of his family’s company, Hospital Corporation of American (HCA), the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain. HCA has the questionable achievement of executing the largest white-collar crime in U.S. history, having been penalized $1.7 billion in fines, so far, for gouging Medicare, health care for our elderly.
It was only a forgiving Bush administration Justice Department that spared the perpetrators prison time. In 1995, Frist supported a Medicare bill to increase for-profit hospital reimbursements by $65 per patient, while reducing not-for-profit reimbursements by $6 per patient. More recently, he has worked to stop a strong patient’s bill of rights, and gridlocked a Medicare prescription benefit.
His reward from the health care industry: more campaign finance dollars than all but two Senate colleagues.
Dr. Frist has an ethical imperative to assure the American public that he will not, as majority leader of the Senate, frame health care legislation.
Quentin Young, M.D.,
Physicians For a National Health Program