Scott campaign defends his record as head of hospital chain - Sun-Sentinel

Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott's campaign motto is simple: "Let's get to work."

It's a job-creation slogan voters can identify with during tough economic times and record unemployment rates.

"I'm the only candidate in this race who has built businesses and helped create tens of thousands of jobs," the Republican says on his campaign website.

Scott's record as the chief executive of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. during the 1990s tells a more complex story.

Under Scott's tenure, Columbia cut more than 5,000 jobs at hospitals nationwide, according to state statistics and a review of news reports on the company's business practices.

Columbia snapped up hospitals from Miami to San Jose. Job losses followed in many markets it entered.

"He would buy hospitals and close them," said Michael Lighty, director of public policy for National Nurses United, a nurses union. "I can't think of a community where his involvement led to a net increase in jobs."

Scott grew his company and became one of Florida's largest private employers largely through acquiring big hospital chains. He picked up independent hospitals and built a handful of others. As the health care industry downsized, Scott earned a reputation for cutting staff, consolidating operations and closing hospitals.

At a campaign stop in Broward last week, Scott dodged a question about Columbia's employee cuts and instead touted his plan to create jobs in Florida, a cornerstone of his campaign.

"As governor, I'll be Florida's Job Creator-in-Chief," his website says. "We won't miss any opportunity to keep or add jobs."

Scott spokesman Brian Burgess said in a statement to the Sun Sentinel that "Columbia closed some hospitals because they were simply not being fully utilized [under capacity, empty beds, etc.]"

"New jobs were created regularly — at individual hospitals, laboratories, surgical centers, regional and national headquarters," Burgess said. Scott also created jobs after he left the company in 1997, the statement said, by investing in private sector businesses and starting a chain of urgent care clinics in Florida that employ 541 people.

Burgess said the campaign had no way of providing any numbers in support of Scott's statement that he created "tens of thousands of jobs" but called it an estimate over his entire career that started with the purchase of doughnut shops while in college.

Calculating a definitive number of jobs lost or added by Scott is difficult. HCA, as his former company is now called, does not have those numbers, nor are they in publicly available annual reports. Layoffs alone do not tell the whole story, Scott's campaign said, and some affected employees were offered other positions in the company.

Scott, 57, started Columbia in El Paso, Texas, in 1987, with the purchase of two hospitals. The young health care attorney bought a third hospital there the following year and shut it down.

It was a pattern that would be repeated as Scott's company aggressively moved into Florida.

'Big uproar'

In the mid-'90s, Columbia/HCA operated more than 50 hospitals throughout the state. Under Scott's leadership, the company consolidated or closed eight Florida hospitals that had employed more than 1,500 people, according to the state Agency for Health Care Administration.

He entered the Florida market beginning in 1988 with the purchase of Victoria Hospital in Miami. Columbia later closed Victoria and shifted its operations to another of its hospitals, Cedars Medical Center, where the staff was cut, eliminating roughly 700 jobs, according to news reports at the time.

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The Real Jobs Machine - Newsweek

If you’re interested in job creation—and who isn’t these days?—you should talk to someone like Morris Panner. In 1999, Panner and some others started a Boston software company called OpenAir. By 2008 they sold it for $31 million. The firm had then grown to about 50 workers. It turns out that entrepreneurship (essentially, the founding of new companies) is crucial to job creation. But as Panner’s experience suggests, success is often a slog.

What’s frustrating and perplexing about the present job dearth is that the U.S. economy has long been a phenomenal employment machine. Here’s the record: 83 million jobs added from 1960 to 2007, with only six years of declines (1961, 1975, 1982, 1991, 2002, 2003). Conventional analysis blames today’s poor performance (jobs are 7.6 million below their pre-recession peak) on weak demand. Because people aren’t buying, businesses aren’t hiring. Though true, this omits the vital role of entrepreneurship.

In any given year, employment may reflect the ups and downs of the business cycle. But over longer periods, almost all job growth comes from new businesses. The reason: high death rates among existing firms. Even successful firms succumb to threats: new competition or technologies; mature markets; the death of founders; shifting consumer tastes; poor management and unprofitability. A company founded today has an 80 percent chance of disappearing over the next quarter century, reports a study by Dane Stangler and Paul Kedrosky of the Kauffman Foundation.

True, some blue-chip firms—the Exxons and Procter & Gambles—endure. Four fifths of the Fortune 500 were founded before 1970. But they are exceptions, and many blue chips have died: Pan Am (once the premier international airline), Digital Equipment (once the second-largest computer maker), and Circuit City (once a leading consumer-electronics chain).

The debate over whether small or big firms create more jobs is misleading. The real distinction is between new and old. American workers are roughly split between firms with fewer or more than 500 employees. In healthy times, older companies of all sizes do create lots of jobs. But they also lose jobs, as some businesses shrink or vanish. On balance, job creation and destruction cancel. All the net job increases occur among startups, finds a study of the 1992–2005 period by economists John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland and Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda of the Census Bureau.

To be sure, entrepreneurship has a downside: booms and busts. Remember the dotcom “bubble.” But more damaging, says Panner, are widespread popular misconceptions about what it is and isn’t.

Start with the Blockbuster Myth: successful entrepreneurship creates huge enterprises à la Google that transform how we live. In reality, “most ventures don’t change the world,” says Panner. They’re unknown companies providing highly specialized goods and services, plus restaurants, auto-repair shops, and many other unromantic businesses. There are more than 500,000 startups annually. The number must be large to make an impact on the 155 million–person labor force.

Second is the Inspiration Myth: most startups spring from some epiphany suggesting a new product or technology. Wrong. Gee-whiz moments are few. Companies constantly change plans. OpenAir ditched its original idea, which didn’t draw customers. “You can’t do anything until you meet someone’s needs,” says Panner. Failure rates are high; half of new firms die within five years.

And finally, the Incentive Myth: it’s necessary to keep tax rates low, so entrepreneurs can reap huge rewards for their time, sweat, and money. Well, this may be true, but it misses a parallel truth: government disincentives to entrepreneurship. Panner, a registered Democrat, criticizes complex accounting, employment and health-care regulations imposed by federal and state agencies that consume scarce investment funds and time. There’s a bureaucratic bias, unintended perhaps, against startups.

It’s all about risk taking. The good news is that the entrepreneurial instinct seems powerful. Americans like to create; they’re ambitious; many want to be their “own bosses”; many crave fame and fortune. (Panner is already involved with a new startup; it has five employees.) The bad news is that venture capital for startups is scarce and that political leaders seem largely oblivious to burdensome government policies. This needs to be addressed. Entrepreneurship won’t instantly cure America’s job deficit, but without it, there will be no strong recovery.

Robert Samuelson is also the author of The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence and Untruth: Why the Conventional Wisdom Is (Almost Always) Wrong.

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Prescription for success - Albany Times Union

The Census Bureau recently reported that the number of people without health insurance in the United States climbed 10 percent between 2008 and 2009, from 46.3 million to 50.7 million, over 15 percent of the nation's total population. This significant increase reflects the state of our economy, increased joblessness among the general public and, even among those with employment, the continued retreat of many employers from providing health care coverage to their workers.

According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of individuals covered through employer-sponsored plans is now at a record low 56 percent. But stay tuned, because over the next couple of years, this figure will rise further and likely not begin to decrease until 2014, when the country makes affordable health insurance available to many more citizens.

Despite these sobering statistics, some still question the merits of our recent health care reform legislation, which finally put in place a safety net for the millions of Americans without health insurance coverage, and for the millions who lose their coverage suddenly, to get it.

Focusing on the economic arguments, reform was and continues to be a no-brainer. First, there is little doubt of the economic costs to employers and the country at large from having a sicker population. Having health insurance is a key predictive factor in whether or not a person stays healthy in the first place.

More uninsured individuals translate into more lost work time and lower productivity for the nation as a whole. We talk in vague terms about "how much" providing health care insurance may cost the country. But what must be remembered is the hundreds of billions of dollars we save by making sure millions more Americans are healthy enough to go to work each day.

For example, a 2003 Commonwealth Fund study concluded that "labor time lost to health reasons" in the United States amounted to more than $250 billion annually. This same survey found that more than 400 million days of work in a single year were lost as a result of worker illness.

Arguments about how much health reform may cost to implement are incomplete when they do not also consider the productivity gains, economic growth and increased standard of living generated over time by having more people working regularly and moving up in their job titles and earnings as a result of the steady employment that comes from being in good health. One of the little known yet most important reasons for our nation's ascension to world economic power over the past 50 years has been the presence of a strong health insurance system to enable American workers to seek care when they need it.

The second valid economic argument justifying expanded health insurance in this country is that the health care sector represents the second largest spending component of our nation's Gross Domestic Product, behind only the military.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, education and health services provide almost one in every five jobs in the United States. The bureau also reported that in 2009 and thus far in 2010, the health care industry has been adding 20,000 new jobs a month across the United States.

Despite our economic meltdown, the health employment sector remains strong, and is a vital ingredient to digging ourselves out of the Great Recession. Nowhere is this seen more clearly at a local level than in the Capital Region, which relies on hospitals, large physician practices, several major insurance plans and countless other health-related businesses to provide tens of thousands of jobs. Without a vibrant health care industry in our area, there would be many more individuals out of work, more houses facing foreclosure, more quickly dropping property values and increased taxes levied on everyone.

When we focus on health insurance's contribution to creating a healthy and productive work force, investment in health reform is a sound investment that will more than pay for itself over time. With our national and local economies in shambles and jobs in short supply, we should embrace any policy that will invigorate the second largest sector of our economy.

Do we need additional health reforms?

Absolutely. These additional reforms must focus on the supply-side problems in our health care industry that include the fragmented and duplicative nature of service delivery, the use of unproven diagnostic and therapeutic approaches that cost too much and the continued problems with customer dissatisfaction and poor quality. It is far from a perfect system, and the underlying business model of "get sick, and then get cared for" must be transformed to one that emphasizes "keep us healthy and prevent illness."

But allowing millions of people to have health insurance at a time when the work force is getting older and sicker and becoming increasingly uninsured is a smart strategic move for our region, state and nation, even if we cannot yet agree on the moral imperative of it all.

Unlike the recent federal stimulus and Wall Street bailout, it will produce a multiplier effect for our economy that will last far longer and help pull us out of this mess for good.

Timothy Hoff, Ph.D., is associate professor of health policy and management at the University at Albany School of Public Health, He is the author of "Practice Under Pressure: Primary Care Physicians and Their Medicine in the Twenty-First Century."

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What UPMC affiliation has meant for two Pittsburgh-area hospitals - GoErie.com

Published: October 03. 2010 12:01AMPITTSBURGH -- Phil Pollice, M.D., understands what Hamot Health Foundation's soon-to-be-former neurosurgeons are going through.
The five physicians with Tri State Neurological Surgeons are leaving Hamot later this year to work at Saint Vincent Health Center.
They are switching hospitals for several reasons, Tri State President Brian Dalton, M.D., said. One of their concerns is the effect of Hamot's ongoing affiliation talks with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Pollice, an ear, nose and throat specialist, had just started treating patients at Passavant Hospital in suburban Pittsburgh when it affiliated with UPMC in 1997.
He had no idea what to expect. Some of his fellow Passavant physicians left the hospital before the affiliation took effect.
"There was a lot of fear among the physicians," Pollice said. "The fear was that we were going to be phased out and replaced with UPMC-employed physicians."
Thirteen years later, Pollice is still treating patients as a private physician at UPMC Passavant and UPMC Mercy. He estimated that about half of UPMC Passavant's doctors remain in private practice.
He recently visited Erie to talk with Hamot doctors about what they could expect if Hamot affiliates with UPMC.
"Like I tell people, some doctors did better when UPMC came in," Pollice said. "Others did worse and moved on."
Doctors aren't the only people concerned about Hamot's possible affiliation with UPMC.
Patients are worried they will be sent to Pittsburgh for procedures and surgeries they now undergo at Hamot.
Erie County Executive Barry Grossman has said he fears that Hamot -- Erie County's second-largest employer -- will slash jobs after affiliating with UPMC.
Neither of those scenarios are going to happen, said Liz Concordia, UPMC executive vice president and president of the health system's hospital and community-services division.
"We're looking to invest $300 million in Erie," Concordia said, referring to the amount of money UPMC will give Hamot over the next 10 years if the two health systems affiliate. "So we want Hamot to be successful. We want to bring patients to Erie."
Sending large numbers of patients to Pittsburgh isn't an option simply because there isn't room for them, Concordia said. Most of the UPMC hospitals in Pittsburgh have occupancy rates of more than 90 percent, she said.
"Our hospitals in Pittsburgh are full," Concordia said. "It's to our advantage to have patients stay in Erie, instead of coming down here where there aren't enough beds already."
UPMC plans to do that by sending physician specialists to Erie who will treat patients and perform surgeries currently not done at Hamot.
For example, Hamot cardiologists told Concordia during her visit to Erie that they would like to see a heart surgeon at Hamot who could perform minimally invasive heart-valve surgeries.
"Those surgeries are currently sent to the Cleveland Clinic," Concordia said. "Our goal would be to help Hamot recruit someone to do that surgery in Erie."
As for jobs, UPMC officials are adamant that an affiliation will not result in significant job losses at Hamot, either immediately after an agreement is reached or several years afterward.
"Overall, our history has been net growth in full-time jobs for the hospitals who have affiliated with us," Concordia said. "We tend to see less growth in low-paid back-office jobs and more growth in high-paid clinical jobs."


Concordia pointed to UPMC Passavant and UPMC Shadyside as affiliation success stories.
Both hospitals joined UPMC in 1997. Passavant, located just north of Pittsburgh in McCandless Township, was a 240-bed community hospital that had just begun performing heart surgeries when it joined UPMC.
Shadyside, located in eastern Pittsburgh and one of the city's oldest hospitals, was a 300-bed facility that opened in 1866.
Since affiliating with UPMC, both hospitals have increased by more than 100 beds and hired additional staff, Concordia said. The number of full-time workers has risen by 38 percent at Shadyside and by 79 percent at Passavant.
"Being affiliated with UPMC has really helped us recruit new physicians," said Joel Weinberg, M.D., a UPMC Shadyside pulmonary critical-care physician. "For whatever reason, being part of UPMC is the biggest aphrodisiac to physicians."
One reason could be UPMC's willingness to pump money into each hospital.
The health system has spent $359 million at Shadyside since 2001 and an additional $283 million at Passavant to build cancer centers, expand emergency departments and purchase state-of-the-art diagnostic and surgical equipment.
"Before we affiliated with UPMC, we were a nice, strong community hospital," UPMC Passavant President Terri Petrick said. "Now, we draw patients from a much larger area. We see patients from West Virginia and all along the Interstate 79 corridor."


Not all UPMC hospitals have shared Passavant's and Shadyside's success.
UPMC Braddock closed Jan. 31, almost 14 years after the eastern suburban Pittsburgh hospital merged with UPMC. The hospital had lost more than $27 million over the previous six years.
"There was too much redundancy in terms of service with other hospitals close by," Pollice said. "It's always hard to see a regional community hospital close, but it was the right decision."
UPMC decided in 2008 to convert its financially struggling South Side Hospital into an outpatient center. The urban hospital, which opened in the 1890s, had lost $4 million in operating and total income in fiscal 2008.
In 2005, UPMC sold its Lee Regional Hospital in Johnstown to the rival Conemaugh Health System.
UPMC merged with Lee Memorial in 1998, but couldn't help the 249-bed hospital make money. It sold Lee Memorial to Conemaugh in 2005 for $58 million.
Hamot Chief Executive John Malone said he is aware of how those hospitals have performed but isn't worried that Hamot will suffer their fate.
"Those hospitals had significant problems and issues that Hamot simply doesn't have," Malone said. "Keep in mind that there have also been examples like UPMC Mercy, which was on the verge of bankruptcy and UPMC turned its finances around dramatically."
Mercy Hospital, which opened in 1847 and is Pittsburgh's oldest hospital, merged with UPMC in 2006. It is losing money but has seen its revenue from treating patients increase by 3.2 percent since the merger; operating costs have risen by just 1.17 percent.

Highmark questions affiliation
One of the affiliation's loudest critics has been Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, western Pennsylvania's largest commercial health insurer.
Highmark recently placed advertisements in the Erie Times-News and sent letters to local insurance agents questioning the need for the affiliation and what effect it could have on the cost of health care in Erie.
"Our concern is that this affiliation will cause the cost of health care in northwestern Pennsylvania to increase because more people will be sent out of town for treatment," said Dan O'Malley, Highmark's market president of the western region. "We've had a lot of experience with UPMC throughout western Pennsylvania, and the result of these affiliations is often higher costs. Not all the time, but it has happened."
Malone called Highmark's comments "disingenuous."
"One of their claims is that we didn't spend enough time looking at alternatives," Malone said. "One of the alternatives we did look at was partnering with Highmark. We had a meeting and asked them to put some meat on the bones of their proposal, and they came back to us and said they couldn't go through with it for several reasons."
The truth, Malone said, is that Highmark fears an affiliation between Hamot and UPMC will strengthen UPMC Health Plan. Highmark currently has about 63 percent of the commercial health insurance market in Erie County, compared with 4 percent for UPMC Health Plan.
Hamot employees and their families could switch their health insurance from Highmark to UPMC Health Plan if the affiliation is approved. That's about 9,000 covered lives, Malone said.
"That would give UPMC Health Plan a foot in the door," said Martin Gaynor, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. "It could enable them to compete with Highmark for folks who are not Hamot employees."


Hamot and UPMC have reached a tentative affiliation agreement and are currently examining each other's finances.
A formal agreement should be finished by December, Malone said. It will then need to be approved by the boards of trustees at both UPMC and Hamot before an affiliation could take effect.
"I believe this affiliation will strengthen Hamot as the area's premier tertiary health-care provider," Concordia said. "For us, it gives UPMC an anchor at the other end of the state, so that patients in your area will go to Hamot instead of going across state lines to hospitals in Ohio and New York state."
DAVID BRUCE can be reached at 870-1736 or by e-mail.

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410000 more jobs by 2018? - Capital Times

Every two years, the state of Wisconsin comes out with its 10-year predictions on job growth.

The report is designed to guide young people into new careers, let business owners know what employment trends are coming and help educators adjust their training programs.

But the timing of the just-released "2008 to 2018 Jobs Outlook" could not have been worse. As economists working with the state Department of Workforce Development were busy reading the tea leaves, real world workers were busy getting pink slips and applying for unemployment benefits.

In the report, the state predicts a record 3.16 million total jobs in Wisconsin by 2018. To get there, Wisconsin will need to add about 410,000 more jobs than existed in August.

Even the two candidates for governor aren't making those kinds of bold promises.

Republican Scott Walker has vowed to create 250,000 new jobs by the end of his first term. Democrat Tom Barrett is slightly more realistic, saying he'll create 180,000 jobs over the next four years or at least enough to replace those lost during the recession.

The state did hit record employment in early 2007, with an estimated 2.88 million jobs. But the employment picture has been dismal since. Wisconsin now counts 80,000 fewer jobs than it did in 2000.

"It's definitely been a tortoise recovery," says Dennis Winters, chief economist with the DWD who helped write the 2018 Jobs Outlook.

The latest issue of "Wisconsin Job Watch" from the liberal Center on Wisconsin Strategy, notes the ongoing problems. After some job gains in the spring, there was zero growth in July and August, leaving the state unemployment rate unchanged at 7.9 percent.

COWS is now warning Wisconsin may have difficulty even creating enough new jobs to match population growth going forward. That could mean systemic high unemployment and workers forced to leave the state to find any kind of career.

"If we assume job growth will be the same as after the 1991 recession, it would take until June 2014 for the number of jobs to catch up to growth in the labor force," says COWS spokeswoman Kari Dickinson. "Furthermore, if we continue a ‘jobless recovery,' the state may never again be able to accommodate the growth of its labor force."

Those sobering statements stand in stark contrast to the widespread optimism many were feeling just two years ago.

State economists in their "2006-2016 Jobs Outlook" had projected state employment would grow by 8 percent over the period, with a record 3.33 million jobs by 2016.

But the latest report appears slightly more realistic, predicting job growth of 2.7 percent over the next 10-year period.

UW-Stevens Point economist Randy Cray helped write the latest Jobs Outlook and says the new projections are well within reason.

"In my opinion the projected net growth of 83,000 jobs over the 10-year period is very anemic and says that we will be in an extended period of very slow job growth," says Cray.

One company actually benefiting from the jobs picture is QTI, the Madison-based temporary staffing firm. QTI has enjoyed double digit growth this year as employers looked to fill openings without doing any hiring.

Marshall Heyworth, chief operating officer of consulting and professional recruiting at QTI, says many companies remain reluctant to add regular staff out of fear the economy isn't recovering fast enough or could slip again in a double dip recession.

"It's clear that many employers are looking at a temporary work force as a permanent feature," he says.

Heyworth says demand has been strong of late for high-skill positions like technical manufacturing, auto mechanics or industrial machining. He says more high school graduates should consider learning tech skills rather than pursuing a four-year degree.

"We've kind of turned our back on those industries but they're still out there," he says.

So what other industries might lead the way in job growth?

Home health aides are projected as the fasting-growing occupation in Wisconsin over the next 10 years, with a projected 38 percent growth rate. Unfortunately, these jobs pay on average just $21,000 a year, according to the DWD report.

Next in line is network systems and data specialists, a sector predicted to grow 37 percent over the next 10 years. These jobs pay on average $64,000.

After that, it's all about health care.

In fact, of the 20 fastest-growing occupations in Wisconsin, all but a handful are related to health services - from dental hygienist to physical therapists. One exception is "gaming dealers," a sector predicted to grow 23 percent over the next 10 years.

Missing from the list of fastest-growing occupations in Wisconsin is biotechnology or life sciences. While there's been a lot of enthusiasm and publicity surrounding the sector, it hasn't yet resulted in major employment gains, as fewer than 1 percent of state jobs are in biotech fields.

But a report last week from BioForward, a Madison-based trade association, says biotechnology could create thousands of new jobs in a variety of fields. The report noted that bioscience employment has grown 3 percent in Wisconsin over the past five years while the state overall has lost 3 percent of its jobs.

"There's so much doom and gloom out there it's nice to have something better to report," says Bryan Renk, executive director of BioForward.

Economist Winters says the problem in measuring the "biotech" sector is that it cuts across so many different fields - from ethanol production to stem cell research.

"The industry itself just isn't that well-defined," he says.

One thing that is well-defined is the need for the overall economy to pick up to get companies hiring. Winters says things won't improve until there is growth across major sectors like consumer consumption, private investment and exports.

"We are in a quandary as to what will get the economy jump-started," he says. "Will more stimulus help? Tax cuts? Both? What about the budget deficit? This is, indeed, a sticky wicket."

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Secondary Sources: Small Business Job Creation, Fiscal State of the Union ... - Wall Street Journal (blog)

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.

–Small Business Job Creation: John Robertson looks at the connection between small businesses and job creation. “Economic research published last month by John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin, and Javier Miranda provides some compelling evidence on the relationship between firm size and job growth. It turns out that the age of a firm is important independent of its size. In particular, the paper finds no systematic relationship between net job growth rates and firm size after controlling for firm age? This finding doesn’t imply that firm size is irrelevant, but size matters mainly because, conditional on survival, young firms grow faster than older firms and tend to be small. In other words, because start-ups tend to be small, most of the truth to the popular perception that small businesses create the most jobs is driven by the contribution of start-ups to net job growth.”

–Fiscal State of the Union: Len Burman says the president should be give an annual explanation of the fiscal health of the nation. “The problem with our fiscal challenges is that they aren?t news. We have a large unsustainable debt burden, just like we did yesterday and the day before and will have tomorrow. It?s news when we run exceptionally high deficits, as we have for the last couple of years, or when we achieve surpluses, as we did briefly at the end of the Clinton Administration. But there?s no event that captures the media?s and the public?s attention, and the problem will only grow worse as giant deficits become old news. There?s little chance for the media to educate the public about the debt and possible solutions. An annual Fiscal State of the Union Address would change that. There would be news coverage. There would be serious discussion of the causes, consequences, and possible remedies to the problem of too much debt. There would be pressure on the president to have some good news to announce as part of the speech, and enough media scrutiny to guarantee that it wasn?t just smoke and mirrors. There would be pressure on the opposition to put forward a coherent plan to do better than the president, not just warmed over rhetoric and platitudes.”

–Economics of Lobbying: Jordi Blanes i Vidal, Mirko Draca and Christian Fons-Rosen examine how political connections are valued for lobbyists. “Lobbying in the US, as well as other democracies, is big business. This column investigates the extent to which former government officials ?cash in? on their political connections when working as lobbyists. It finds that once the politician for whom they worked leaves office, their revenue falls 20%, or $177,000 per year, suggesting that lobbyists are paid more for ?who they know? than ?what they know?.

Compiled by Phil Izzo

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Progress Being Made on 'Green' Health Center - Inside INdiana Business (press release)

September 30, 2010

News Release

INDIANAPOLIS - More than 30 contractors, architects, and city officials will get a preview of the latest in green infrastructure techniques being used in the construction of the Near-Eastside?s new HealthNet People?s Health & Dental Center when the first completed phase ? a 9,000 sq. ft. permeable paver parking lot ? opens at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 2340 E. 10th St.

The highlight will be at 11 a.m. when officials simulate a flash flood to demonstrate how the permeable paver parking lot works. A water truck will dump more than 4,000 gallons of water on the lot in a matter of 15 minutes ? equivalent to 9 inches of rain ? and is expected to produce no run-off.

The new center serves as a demonstration project for the City of Indianapolis? Office of Sustainability in its use of green building techniques and materials, many of which haven?t been tested in this climate area before. As an innovative stormwater management strategy, permeable pavers allow water from rain or snowmelt to flow through the pavers, into a stone base, and then filter into the soil below. This eliminates stormwater runoff and protects nearby surface waters from stormwater pollution.

From 10 a.m. to noon, representatives from the engineering and design community will be on hand to answer questions about the center?s energy-efficient heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system and comprehensive storm water management system, which includes the parking lot composed of permeable pavers, a bioswale and an energy efficient roof. Event participants include City of Indianapolis Office of Sustainability, Belgard Environmental, Axis Architects, Halstead Architects, Roger Ward Engineering, Inc., EMHT, John Oberlies Consulting Engineers, Inc.

Thanks to capital campaign donors and $5.3 million in federal stimulus funds, the $6.6 million environmentally ?green? health center serving the uninsured and underinsured will create jobs and set a new standard for patient care, delivering 42,000 patient visits per year. Scheduled to open in early 2011, the health center is located along the East 10th Street business corridor, which is already undergoing many improvements as a part of the 2012 Super Bowl Legacy Project.

###

Since 1968, HealthNet (www.indyhealthnet.org) has been a mainstay in the Indianapolis community. Through its network of five community-based health centers, an OB/GYN care center, a pediatric and adolescent care center, and eight school-based clinics, HealthNet annually serves over 50,000 individuals and families. Many of them are uninsured or underinsured and live below the federal poverty level. HealthNet services include: primary and preventive health care; OB-GYN support and coaching for expectant mothers; Healthy Families and Better Indy Babies; dental services; Homeless Initiative Program; counseling, outreach and social service programs. HealthNet?s health centers include Martindale-Brightwood Health & Dental Center, People?s Health & Dental Center, Southeast Health & Dental Center, Southwest Health & Dental Center, Barrington Health Center, the Care Center at the Tower, the Pediatric and Adolescent Care Center and the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Center.

Source: HealthNet Inc.

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