Santorum Tied to Temecula Hospital Bungling

In this conservative region, many people complain about Obamacare, but how many know that Temecula has embraced Santorumcare?

Obamacare has no public option, and medical insurance companies still snag 30 percent of our health dollars for profit, so that CEOs earn millions by denying and delaying tests and treatments.

Medicare operates on an overhead of less than 4 percent. Among other things, Obamacare takes away the choice of going without medical coverage by mandating health insurance for all Americans.

With the help of Temecula officials, Santorumcare denies choice by creating a local hospital empire within the Southwest pocket of the Inland Empire.

From 2007 to June of 2011, GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum was on the Board of Directors of Universal Health Services, the parent corporation of Southwest Healthcare System that operates both Inland Valley and Rancho Springs Medical Centers.

UHS is building the new hospital in Temecula after intentionally delaying the project, even as patients were being parked in the hallways of the existing two hospitals.

To read the accusations about why UHS intentionally delayed building the Temecula hospital, .

UHS executives decided not to invest in building the Temecula hospital while state and federal officials found repeated licensing deficiencies at the existing Southwest Healthcare hospitals.

Meanwhile, Santorum was compensated $395,000 from UHS in director fees and stock options, according to a Jan. 6, 2012 front-page story in the New York Times.

While patient care may have been questionable at some of their facilities, UHS certainly knows how to take care of conservative politicians.

UHS turned our local medical fiasco into a political one by recruiting members of the Temecula to defend its beleaguered local hospitals against the state licensing agency.

In September of 2009, Temecula officials flew to Sacramento with the CEO of the local hospital group to lobby in favor of allowing Southwest Healthcare to open additional facilities and even sought the intervention of Governor Schwarzenegger on behalf of UHS.

The state refused to license the new facilities while existing deficiencies going back to 2005 were not corrected.

Thank goodness, the medical model prevailed over political meddling, and the hospitals finally came into compliance, albeit under the threat of losing Medicare reimbursements. However, huge questions remain as to how much Temecula politicians really care about medical services in the community.

Conservatives like to talk about a free market and the benefits of competition, but in Temecula, council members advocated for a hospital monopoly. Murrieta officials thankfully brought Loma Linda hospital to the area while Temecula put political expediency before medical necessity.

Delays in constructing the Temecula hospital required that UHS executives reapply to the city, and the corporation brought forth a cheaper version of the original hospital plans. In February of 2011, the put on a good show of frustration with UHS executives before predictably settling on the new hospital plans that provide 30 fewer hospital beds in the first phase than originally proposed.

The 2009 lobbying effort showed that Temecula officials were already in bed with UHS.

I have no illusion of Rick Santorum directly conspiring with Temecula officials for UHS, but politically, they are cut from the same cloth – or perhaps gauze, in this case.

A January 5, 2012 article from Reuters.com reported “During Santorum's four years on the board, UHS's McAllen, Texas, hospital group was sued for defrauding Medicare through 'illegal compensation to doctors in order to induce them to refer patients to hospitals within the group,' according to a Justice Department press release in 2009. The McAllen group agreed to settle the lawsuit by paying $27.5 million.”

Perhaps that settlement payment explains the lack of capital to bring existing facilities into compliance and the delay in building the Temecula hospital, but it also speaks to a perverted sense of values in the world of corporations and politicians.

Obamacare is imperfect and lacks “Medicare for all” as championed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont, and many progressive pundits. Santorumcare appears to champion private hospital corporations that fleece Medicare and the taxpaying public.

If UHS’s McAllen group settled by paying $27.5 million, God only knows how much the corporation profited from the alleged defrauding of Medicare. During this financial finagling, UHS was frugal when it came to delivering a hospital to the Temecula Valley.

If Obamacare is to be falsely named socialized medicine by conservative politicians, then what Santorum, UHS and Temecula officials advocate is the medical malpractice of crony capitalism.