Selected
Writings of Dr. Charles
Phillips -
Former
Kaiser Permanente Physician
Dear Mr. Wells (NYC
Analyst
for Fitch Ratings),
Thank you for
being willing to
read this Email for the purpose of informing
bond customers of potential risks with Kaiser
Bonds. [I am
assuming that the Bonds take the form of Kaiser Hospital Bonds but
would
appreciate getting a faxed copy of a sample at
559-322-5307.]
So here are some concerns which could be expanded as needed.
1.
Kaiser
Permanente is a medical care program consisting of three
partnership entities - the Kaiser Health Plan, the Kaiser Hospitals,
and
the FOR PROFIT Permanente medical groups;
2.
The largest two
medical groups are The Permanente Medical Group,
Inc. covering Northern California or TPMG (a for profit corporation)
and
the Southern California Permanente Medical
Group or SCPMG (a for profit
partnership); each are set up to create stock dividends for
the physician
partners;kpgivesoutfakebondinfo
3. My current
estimate for last
year being $160,000 per partner, although
a last minute bonus distribution in December of 2003 might have
funneled
some of the same money through a different path to the same physicians;
this comes off the Tahoe Accord awarding the physicians half of the
nearly
$1 billion in "net income" (read profits) of KP last year (primary and
signed documents now available);
4.
The public has no
idea of the profit sharing that goes on nor
that these monies are hidden under the Plan in such a way as to be
non-recoverable
by the bond holders should there be a downturn; the transparency of its
physician profit system on the backs of seniors could cause such a stir
that the government might be embarrassed into action (right now the
mutual
back scratching is done as a business as usual approach to make
Medicare
look almost solvent).
5.
As the physicians public stance of being at arms length in
negotiation with the Kaiser Plan
and being salaried with only tiny bonuses
is an advertising lie, enrollment is done in fraud; actually
- and
by a chartered and signed agreement - the physicians are in control of
a steering committee that requires all input to itself (and not the
Board)
as it prepares all issues which go before the Board;
6. As
the Plan Board
and the Hospital Board are the same, the
physicians control the whole tripartite organization and are the
primary
source of and benefactors of all of the other frauds
which will be noted
hereafter in this e-mail; yet the myth of Kaiser Permanente
being
"non profit" is paraded through the media and even is reflected in your
own Business Wire article of 3/10/04 with the term "not-for-profit" on
page 2 of 5;
7.
The fact that the physician profit is built into the base rates
to the patients and between the entities - verified in Medicare
documents
- these funds are not the result of lucky years but stand foremost as a
goal from which all other decisions are made, e.g. that Kaiser is a
"wellness
program" and not a "sickness program" - an internal principle never
shared
with the gullible
seniors who sign up for ads of trust;
8.
Kaiser's $40 to
$100 million ad campaigns each year are designed
to create a brand name for both KP and for the Permanente physicians
which
draw in new enrollees - mostly seniors as they account for 23% of
Kaiser's
income per your report - which eclipses the poor word of mouth reports
that come from the Kaiser victims and their families; note that Kaiser
was kicked out of Texas after having 20 wrongful death cases in Dallas
alone;
9.
A strong part of the ad campaign is that Kaiser physicians
come from top universities; the reality internally is that
the favorite
choice for Kaiser is often the physician who has come from more
life-negating
cultures and can be Kaiserized most rapidly into changing the
physician-patient
relationship to the "group ethic" of the Permanente-patient
relationship;
10. Another
strong tenant of
advertising is that Kaiser practices "evidence
based medicine" which is the key channel on the Permanente map for
reaching
the gold of investment capitol (I guess bonds guaranteed to a degree by
your ratings); actually these highly secret documents stray
far from
the world's evidence of good care and come as close to do no care as
possible.
11.
Most legal suits against Kaiser are focused on the purposeful
avoidance of compassion, diagnosis, testing, referral, and
treatment;
some others go on to the overuse of morphine to kill
off patients in hospice
centers (part of the ABC kit with lethal dosage range orders
accompanying);
12.
Kaiser could easily be fined $5 billion retroactively for
failing to live up to its tax free requirements - like having a
community
hospital open to physician applications from the community, like
spending
5% on the poor rather than this year branching into political funding
of
ballot issues, like being controlled by a for profit steering committee
rather than a board, like talking 25% of heart attack victims into Do
Not
Resuscitate options by painting ICU as a torture chamber with tubes in
the throat, etc.
13.
Kaiser is ripe for losing its arbitration protection from
suit due to false enrollment advertising, gross medical chart - lab
tests
- films (evidence) tampering after bad outcomes, keeping a stable of
judges
who each get 2-3 cases a year at about $15,000 a case, having the
"independent
arbitrator" firm testify for Kaiser to keep the same system in place,
by
intimidating patients from beginning (the "demand") to the end (you
might
have to pay for all this); by now going up against an attorney who went
to law school primarily to avenge is mother's fraudulent Kaiser care,
etc.
14.
Kaiser could easily implode on its Joint Ventures program,
e.g. CareTouch in which it spent $15 million of nonprofit dollars to
set
up this for profit company only to spin it out with Dr. Lawrence still
on board; note that the chief architect of the ventures has
been
the grandson of Henry Kaiser, this grandson now being indicted for a
$23
million investment scam designed to fool Europe;
15.
Similarly
Kaiser fakes its inspections by the Joint Commission
and other regulators by having faked notebooks suggesting the wide
participation
of staff in decisions; actually staff cannot look at these
same notebooks
(a new one for me);
16.
Kaiser medical libraries are shams with most textbooks being
out of date; one good hospital in California gives Kaiser all of its
outdated
textbooks as the HMO library is for show not research;
17.
The case Timmis v.
Kaiser is in Appeals Court and could cost
Kaiser some $500 million for the horror of making seniors split their
pills
into uneven pieces;
Kaiser's "half pill" explanation pretends the halves are equal even
though the concede the proven 40% swing in dosing;
18.
Your bond holders
need to understand that Kaiser has failed
in more states than it is currently in - failures include Texas, New
York,
Kansas, Utah, North Carolina, to name a few; many states
found reason
to fine Kaiser even as they left for fraudulent statements of value;
19.
The
Washington, DC Kaiser is propped up by taxing other Kaiser
units to try to convince the country that it is truly
national; it
is also a base for lobbying Congress with such items as the Permanente
Journal (even though the Journal if read carefully shows jokes about
long
Kaiser lines);
20.
The hospitals being built have strange configurations like
putting ICU far from the ER to discourage its use - I know, I used to
have
to run the long distance from the ER to ICU at the Kaiser Fresno
hospital
where I worked 18 months; several times I got lost getting
back due
to the large number of medical wards never developed - the hospital
serving
more a shell suggesting medical care than giving it.
21.
Illegal loans to
administration would be another area for
you to review.
22.
Kaiser maintains
that "Kaiser Permanente" is only a program
not an entity - so how can they issue bonds as your balance sheets
show?
All
of this can be proven to any interested party. The question
is whether the bond holders should only get one view.
Otherwise they
can stay with your "Outlook" statement - "Fitch
Ratings/Public
Finance/Health
Care New Issue/Kaiser Permanente, California" - which is much like a
typical
Kaiser ad.
Thank you
for your time
and thoroughness. $1.6B in bonds is a
large amount to rate.
Charles
Phillips, MD - Fresno, California -
Former
Kaiser physician - Pager
559-262-6240
Board Member
of the
Managed Care Reform Committee
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The Kaiser Papers
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