Brant Mittler

Physician, Attorney, Journalist

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Using AI for prognostic stratification. We tried with the Duke CV databank 50 years ago but the academic medical world and the insurance industry weren’t listening. They preferred using computers to do RCTs for Big Pharma.

https://t.co/ktmYR48zTA

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

CEO vs.
Surgeon’s pay.
https://t.co/XZNxwh4kXW

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

How the Corporate takeover of American medicine has affected the nursing profession and patient care.
https://t.co/a8iM34dJMC

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

You want to understand how our country works, see this. HHS and Medicare Advantage may be the next most corrupt.

https://t.co/tCNG2ZQfQm

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Law schools should play this video in a course to identify legal, ethical and human rights issues. So should medical school courses and departments that purport to deal with ethics.

https://t.co/3jfwf1GyLj

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

https://t.co/UKDvK0PYqu

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Source: Healthcare Dive. Note concerns are for “the market” not for the patients. Taxpayer dollars flowing to fund HMO execs’ bigger estates in the Hamptons, Malibu and Jackson Hole. https://t.co/Ltt9cHZD93

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

A Doctor Sued 700 Patients for Debts; 81 Were Arrested. Now He’s a Senator. https://t.co/QMs3NiMNvu via @NYTimes

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Non profit hospital CEOs doing very well. https://t.co/yyC27eiHCy

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Courageous commentary on the plight of hard working families in rural Texas. https://t.co/NZiwBhZjEL

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

This is how real doctors eat. This is not how billionaire private equity investors who own too many doctors eat. https://t.co/u6zTwYBv35

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Sounds like this came from the Harvard Health Policy brain trust. Maybe give them discounted hot dogs like at Costco? https://t.co/5uJMTf5aI2

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Foster children are abused for profit in Texas. Texas is “open for business” as Ted Cruz chortled on Meet the Press today. See reporter Mike Barajas story on death of Jo Angel Rodriguez while in foster care in San Antonio in San Antonio Current. https://t.co/B4cYrZaxzN

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

So your ICU nursing care will be by the lowest bidder? What could go wrong? How much more will the administrators be making? https://t.co/COUWyVZOfJ

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Source: Healthcare Dive https://t.co/wTScRXIetw

[Dutch Rojas @DutchRojas]

I’m at the airport. Of course I start reading weekend edition of the @WSJ.

Wouldn’t you know it, the dual designated non-profit grifter, NYU Langone, has a full page ad.

And you’re still wondering why healthcare is expensive?

And you know that means taxpayers are buying WSJ ads for NYU Langone.

Taxpayers subsidize its land.
Taxpayers subsidize its buildings.
Taxpayers subsidize its debt.
Taxpayers subsidize its expansion.

What did it cost? The Wall Street Journal rate card prices a national full-page color advertisement at more than $300,000 (52 weeks).

For one page.

This is the same “nonprofit” hospital system that advertised on a Super Bowl commercial.

Its hospital enterprise reports nearly $10 billion in property, plant, and equipment. It has more than 6,000 physicians.

It operates more than 330 outpatient locations. It buys hospitals. It buys orthopedic groups. It buys physician practices.

It buys land.
It buys advertising.
It buys the commercially insured patients every independent physician needs to survive.

Then it calls itself a charity.
How many taxpaying neurosurgery practices were destroyed while NYU Langone built this empire?

How many physicians were forced to sell?

How many became employees of the institution they once competed against?

How many independent practices had their referrals siphoned away, their patients captured, and their businesses slowly suffocated by a competitor taxpayers were forced to subsidize?

Nobody knows. Nobody counts the bodies. An independent practice dies quietly.

First, referrals disappear.
Then revenue collapses.
Then employees are fired.
Then the physician sells.

Then the hospital raises the price, adds a facility fee, and hangs its logo over the corpse.

The independent physician paid income taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, commercial rent, malpractice premiums, and the full cost of building a practice.

NYU Langone took the tax exemption, accumulated billions in assets, swallowed the competition, and bought an advertisement congratulating itself.

Where is the charity?

NYU Langone wants the power of a corporation, the market share of a monopoly, the real estate portfolio of a conglomerate, and the tax treatment of a church.

No.

If you acquire competitors like a corporation, advertise like a corporation, accumulate billions like a corporation, and hunt profitable patients like a corporation, then you can finally do one honest thing like a corporation:

No more subsidies.
Pay your taxes.

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Farfetched? https://t.co/yGzTZWBCcF

[Dutch Rojas @DutchRojas]

Suppose restaurants became tax exempt.
Five years later they held billions in assets.

Paid CEOs $33 million.

Reported hundreds of millions in annual surplus.
Then argued they deserved even larger taxpayer subsidies.

Would anyone still call them charities?
Why is healthcare different?

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

https://t.co/nfqsewZCOo

[Brant Mittler @BrantMDJD]

Why would these voluntary contracts not favor the wealthier Medicare beneficiaries? Medicare patients have been conditioned to believe their care is either “free” or should be. Most don’t have extra dollars they want to pay their doctors for access. As you say, the doctor is rich and they’re not. This is a very good post. Thank you.