Psychiatric health business model leaves children sleeping on bare, plastic mattresses in filthy rooms; dust and dirt collected in the corners while same psychiatric business has enriched founder and chief executive with $20 million in compensation last year.
Yes, it’s true. Here’s a link.
We, as a society are no different in this respect from the parents who leave their children in the car while they spend hours gambling in a casino. Except, the only difference is the parents get arrested but the CEO’s might at worse see their company pay a fine, a cost that is no doubt calculated into the cost of deciding to break the laws and, even better, a tax deductible figure.
As I have discussed earlier, I was a Section 12 patient at Arbour’s facility in Attleborough. I was suffering from severe depression and although Section 12 calls for a minimum 72 hour observation period, because I was admitted on a Thursday and it was a long holiday weekend, I got to spend five days in their care. That was sixteen years ago and I’ve never relapsed. I do not recall anything as horrible as the conditions mentioned in this article, but I can recall that the facility was lacking in some resources for recreation. After my release and eventual recovery, I took a serious look into working at that sort of facility. I enjoyed the time I spent there (after the initial shock and denial) and truly enjoyed helping my fellow patients. As I was unemployed at the time and considering “improving my job skills”, I enrolled in a master programs at a Massachusetts college in order to get my certification to work in that area. After the completion of my first semester, I began looking at what opportunities I might find and the wage scale that I could expect (yes, I know, I should have done this before…..but I was still working through things). What I leaned was shocking. Many of the people who had taken care of me at the hospital were probably making less than $15 an hour and most were part time – no benefits. Even with a degree that would cost me tens of thousands to fund and at least two years to complete, I’d be in the $40-60K range if I was lucky enough (according to anyone I spoke to) to find a full time job. Most people I met were working two or three part time jobs and NONE of them advised me, a father of two young children and a wife who was not able to work, to pursue this career path any further.
I ended that quest and got a job at a car dealership where I was making about $80K right out of the gate, selling high end cars to wealthy people. But I digress…
Mental Health workers making $15 an hour while the CEO makes tens of millions. Coffee and Donuts workers making less than $15 an hour while the CEO makes tens of millions.
There’s a pattern here. The answer is NOT for the Coffee and Donuts workers to “improve their skill sets” and leave these jobs to the high school kids anymore than the mental health care workers need to do the same.
As Charlie described my POV, we need to do more than raise the ceiling, we need to lift the floor.
Horrifying.
John I shortened up the title (made it the first paragraph). Hope that works for you.
Thanks!
When I was a patient, I remember that we had no playing cards and most of the board games were missing key pieces. The staff would bring in movies on tape for us, spending their own money. About a year after I was out, I returned with gift to the staff an patients: a few decks of playing cards and a gift certificate at Block Buster Video. The people who actually do the work there are angels, poorly paid angels in a company where one man makes $20 Million.
We need to impose the “Buffet rule”. We need to dramatically increase the tax rate on those wealthy CEOs. We need to impose limits on the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay.
This is one example of the fallacy of “privatization”. There are countless others.
In a Facebook post by Senator Eldridge, one of the comments made by (I assume) a Republican was that wealthy CEO’s are the force that creates the jobs that pay the workers better and better salaries…..yeah, good old trickle down. This is also taken as a fact by many of our Democrats in office and yes, sometimes it does happen, but it appears that if does not happen nearly as often as it needs to.
Privatization is only as good as the individual(s) behind it. As the saying goes, free market capitalism assumes that evil men will do evil things for the benefit of mankind.
This is one of the most obvious disconnects between theory and practice. Sure, wealthy CEOs COULD pay their workers better salaries, but most evidence suggests that they DON’T. I have long thought three things about how this should actually work. First, the law should prohibit a CEO from making, say, 100x more than the business’s lowest paid worker (assuming a 2080 hour year for hourly employees). Second, if the CEO gets an increase in his compensation package, all employees should see theirs increase by the same percentage. (After all, if the justification is that profits are up and thus the CEO must be doing a good job it should be acknowledged that such would not happen without everyone else doing their jobs too.) Finally, tax incentives should be calculated only AFTER the business has shown it has hired people in the previous year, rather than based on the promise it will the following year.
There’s another way as well. Our government(s) can craft a tax code that offers incentives for companies that offer equitable profit sharing for the employees coupled with incentives for retention rates of employees to discourage layoffs to protect short term profits.
In fact, on the issue of profit sharing, Hillary Clinton’s campaign web site gave that some mention but we never heard her mention it on the stump, or at least I did not. Guess I was too busy listening to Rush, according to my nemesis here in BMG who seems quite obsessed with me at the moment, but I digress.
Profit sharing has a long history in the USA, starting with President Washington and the government’s assistance given to the cod fleet. .
Indeed, some of our most famous captains of industry like George Eastman believed strongly in profit sharing and is credited as one of the founders of the practice in American corporations. What’s key about Eastman’s point of view in this regard is he did not see profit sharing as a gift but as economic justice.