Leading hospital chains have come under fire for furloughing employees despite receiving about $15 billion in government funding, according to analysis from The New York Times.
HCA Healthcare, a $36 billion company that made more than $7 billion in profits in the last two years and paid its chief executive officer $26 million in 2019, recently received roughly $1 billion in federal government bailout funding due to the coronavirus pandemic. HCA, along with other major healthcare services companies like Tenet Healthcare and the Mayo Clinic, have received more than $15 billion in funding from the federal CARES Act despite the fact that those companies all have billions of dollars in cash reserves, according to a report from the Times at the end of May.
In the most recent year the Times analyzed, these companies paid their five highest-earning executives about $874 million in total. At least three dozen of these chains have furloughed staff or reduced pay because of the coronavirus outbreak. Seven organizations that received a combined $1.5 billion in bailout funds have furloughed or laid off over 30,000 workers.
"We don't work in a jelly bean factory, where it's OK if we make a blue jelly bean instead of a red one," said nurse Kathy Montanino, who works at HCA's Riverside Community Hospital in California. "We are dealing with people's lives, and this company puts their profits over patients and their staff."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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