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As COVID raged in New York hospitals, executives pocketed $73M in bonuses (2022)
- listenallyall 3y agoThat is an average bonus of about $273,000, keeping pace with executive payouts that spiked in the four years before the pandemic hit The headline makes it sound like executives were collecting enormous additional bonuses, yet this sentence basically says the bonuses were modest, and the same as previous, non-COVID years.
- lisasays 3y agoThe way I read the article -- the main point is that the bonuses doled out to executives stood in stark contrast with the sacrifices of, you know, the actual front-line workers out in the truth. Who in some cases made the ultimate sacrifice, in fact. And for funding those bonuses (in part) with "emergency" relief funds provided by the federal government.
- tinus_hn 3y agoYou’d think if the healthcare system is overrun, the executives have to work harder as well. This is just the standard ‘executives get bonuses’ whine with some COVID sauce on top of it.
- lisasays 3y agoThe executives have to work harder as well. Nowhere near as much as the front-line workers, by all accounts.
- tinus_hn 3y agoThe whole idea of ‘front-line workers’ as if it’s some kind of battlefield is stupid drama and leads to nothing but Facebook whinery about unrelated things like executive bonuses. It’s so excessively dramatic it can’t be taken seriously. If they want executive pay, take a management course and move upwards through the organization. It really isn’t that hard.
- lisasays 3y agoIs stupid drama and leads to nothing but Facebook whinery Right -- the workers quoted in the article (the same people who will be saving your ass on your next trip to the emergency room) are just a bunch of whining babies, with no idea they're talking about. Too stupid, in fact, to realize that literally each and everyone one of them can just take a class, and help themselves to CEO pay.
- tinus_hn 3y agoNo, they aren’t the ones complaining about executive bonuses and in fact nowhere does the article say they are the ones complaining. They leave that useless whinery to Karen on the internet. > the same people who will be saving your ass on your next trip to the emergency room This kind of emotional appeal is on the same level as crying ‘Won’t somebody please think about the children!’. And of course it has absolutely nothing to do with executive bonuses.
- lisasays 3y agoThey aren’t the ones complaining about executive bonuses From the article: "Frontline nurse talks about NY hospital executive pay and bonuses during pandemic"
- tinus_hn 3y agoApparently the tear tugging emotional appeal of this nurse is so inconsequential it wasn’t deemed worthy including in the article text, but indeed they found a nurse issuing it. She felt this, she felt that. I don’t think a hospital is the right place of work if you can’t stand the risks of being close to sick people and I doubt there would be any amount of money that would have ameliorated the risk. But hey, you can and should always try for more! Shame the executives are more effective at that and I do agree that a management course is not for everyone, case in point.
- bigtex88 3y agoWhy do you believe the executives should be paid more in these situations? They take less personal health risk than the front-line workers and by your logic it seems that executive jobs aren't that difficult if the job can be acquired by just taking a management course. So they clearly aren't being paid more because the job is harder.
- listenallyall 3y agoYou have the right to read the article with whatever degree of disgust you want. I'd ask, if the execs were enriching themselves by siphoning off the emergency relief funds, why was the bonus amount the same as the previous 4 years? Shouldn't it be higher?
- lisasays 3y agoAt the very least - there should be some explicit accounting of where the money went. And some provision for ensuring that front-line workers are adequately protected and compensated.
- listenallyall 3y agoSeems that detailed accounting records do exist and are publicly accessible. That's how USA Today was able to conduct an analysis, and subsequently write this article.
- lisasays 3y agoThe only records they referred to were in regard to outputs (end-of-year profits, compensation for upper-tier employees). Not in regard to how federal moneys were spent.
- listenallyall 3y agoThat's what USA Today reported on. Maybe you should check the source data set yourself before complaining that there's no accounting?
- lisasays 3y agoMaybe you should check the source data set yourself You understand that your simply closing your eyes and imagining that this data set must exist (and in the level of detail that you want it to have) doesn't make it so, right?
- nubinetwork 3y agoBear in mind, that $273000 could fund 5-6 nurses.
- listenallyall 3y agoNo, it couldn't, salaries are higher and fully-loaded costs significantly higher. Further, there is a massive nurse shortage, the idea there are nurses out there waiting to be hired is absolutely not true.
- nubinetwork 3y agoMaybe where you live, first year nurses here would gladly take 50K just to start paying off their university costs. Edit: if the hospitals won't hire them directly, they can also go to a contract nursing agency and start working in eg. home care (which oddly enough pays more than working at a hospital)
- sokoloff 3y agoThat $50K/yr salary nurse is probably costing the hospital $75K/yr or more all-in. (That's what GP meant when they said "fully loaded".)
- mrobins 3y agoFor context, New York Presbyterian employs over 20,000 people including 6,500 doctors.
- geophph 3y ago“I went to work at a New York hospital during the peak COVID wave and all I got was a lousy pots and pans parade”
- treebeard901 3y agoIt is kind of incredible just how many people and companies made so much money off of COVID. Never let a crisis go to waste...
- scotty79 3y agoIt's firmly established that already rich people and a metric ton of money during the pandemic. I don't really see a reason why would hospital executives be excluded. The tide rises all (rich) boats.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kortilla 3y agoIsn’t this what we pay hospitals for though? I’m having trouble reconciling “massive hospitalization caused good hospital performance” with the expected outrage here.
- sgillen 3y agoPeople are mad that in a crisis an amount large money was given to executives who are already very well compensated and also not on the front lines, rather than to the frontline workers.
- VagueMag 3y agoIn fact, hospital staffing levels fell after the initial outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 and had not fully recovered two years later. Meanwhile, it was considered everyone's personal obligation to undertake every possible manner of precaution to avoid infection so as to protect the putatively "overloaded" hospital systems.
- ChuckNorris89 3y agoEven in my EU country, with a decent public healthcare system, the staffing shortages have increased post-covid and are only getting worse. The irony is that the staff shortages are further amplifying the shortages, as stressed out staff is leaving the field and youngsters want to avoid this profession when they hear about the stress of dealing with the shortages. It's like the rolling snowball effect. The obvious solution is to pay staff much more, but with what money? We can't print anymore cheap money as we're already in an inflationary environment and we can't raise taxes any further as people already pay enough taxes and we've already committed more money to the military after the Russian invasion. Politicians are in a pickle.
- undersuit 3y ago>but with what money? "As COVID raged in New York hospitals, executives pocketed $73M in bonuses" Found the money.
- refurb 3y agoI mean, isn't that entirely expected? If more care is needed, hospital revenues and profits increase, so executive gets bonuses?
- 000ooo000 3y agoTo have read the article and responded with such a simplistic assessment leaves me puzzled.
- readthenotes1 3y agoIt's still sad to see this level of exploitation while the pictures of corpses in trucks is still in memory. Of course, we still remember the governor of New York claiming that PPE was walked in the front door of hospitals and walked out the back door of hospitals by employees ripping it off...
- taurath 3y agoExecutives don’t lose. They get paid when the company is doing poorly and they have to make “hard decisions” to do layoffs. They get paid when the company is doing well. The most downright destructive executives I’ve ever worked under are still employed. They don’t take pay cuts. The workers, nurses, doctors, orderlies, etc at hospitals are completely burned out and are reduced to skeleton crews. Hospitals get bought by private equity or big conglomorates and are gutted and their owners rewarded handsomely for churning through people like sociopaths. Why have hope?
- chris-orgmenta 3y ago>Why have hope? I feel this sentence is a non sequitur unless you inject "and this will never be fixed because A, B, C" before it. I have hope that it will resolve, but I don't have hope that it will be done in what I consider an appropriate timeframe. I think 'we' are talking about these (relatively tiny, but still extremely terrible and important to fix) injustices more than 'we' did while the East India Company were operating.
- taurath 3y agoThere's no guarantee of resolution, we can just as easily go even deeper into a capitalist-feudal state. The truth is we have enough resources to solve all these problems, and mitigate all this suffering and yet we don't, and the problems are getting worse not better. Maybe it'll be better in a generation, but we've squandered and centralized so much wealth without actually building much of anything useful. Our towns and cities crumble. > I think 'we' are talking about these (relatively tiny, but still extremely terrible and important to fix) injustices more than 'we' did while the East India Company were operating. I'm sure Indians would beg to differ!
- superchroma 3y ago[flagged]
- Nasrudith 3y agoTerror is a fucking stupid method for bloody-minded idiot barbarians. It worked so well that the French went to dynastic emperors!
- bluSCALE4 3y agoYou mean someone stood to gain with all those "covid" deaths? Color me surprised.
- yieldcrv 3y agoI would be more surprised if that didn’t happen
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- zx8080 3y agoThere's a free market in the US, isn't it? Some would say, don't blame execs, they are products of the market, not the reason for it. How many of HN readers would refuse some large bonus?
- usernew 3y agoYeah - I never understand this train of thought. It seems like some edgy teen ranting while working as cashier at the movies. It's a company - they can pay whoever they want, however much they want, and they are not obligated to keep anyone employed or have their internal compensation dictated by society. What society can do is organize into unions and push back, so when they lay off nurses while taking bonuses, the remaining nurses go too and the business goes out of business. If that's the consequence of laying people off, instead of remaining people being unhappy being underpaid for 20 hour shifts, then the company will either use the bonus money for employees, or close down.
- ant6n 3y agoTrue. If you don’t like it, go to Russia. (/s)
- throw9away6 3y ago[flagged]
- Ekaros 3y agoWhy don't the users simply select health care system outside the one that pays too much in their mind to executives? Surely in a free market society there must be alternatives, or maybe some VC firm should start one ignoring all the regulations like they did with Uber and AirBnB that everyone loves.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThey do. People forgo healthcare, use online searches and forums, visit cheaper non medical doctors, travel to other countries, etc. Emergencies do not really have an alternative though, for obvious reasons.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoIt's a truism now that executives skim bonuses at all times. When the accountants got in charge of corporations they thought "Hey, we can write checks to ourselves!" and they did. Not being a negative nelly. It's endemic. Any money left over from operation? It belongs to the executives. Can be dropping wages because "it wasn't a good year!" and executives still get bonuses.
- qgin 3y agoA fun thing happens if you ever look at international health insurance plans. Usually there are 2 plans. One covering the whole world and one covering the whole world minus the United States which costs literally half as much. I’m not claiming executive bonuses are the reason US healthcare costs multiple times more than healthcare in any other country in the world, but the economics of the system are fundamentally broken in a way that is unique to the United States.