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Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

arstechnica.com

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Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#71

Post by renewiltord »

spiderice wrote: post #62
csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

This all may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that I have no interest in donating my money to an organization that is going to give a sizable chunk of it to some rich CEO rather than the people that I'm trying to donate to.

You’re donating to rwbj? Why? That’s dumb af. It’s like donating to IKEA because it’s owned by a non profit. It’s a business that has exploited a regulatory system.

The only reason you’d donate to this hospital or Harvard or any other such exploits is if you think it’ll get you something: earlier treatment, admissions for your kids and so on.

If you want that and you know the game and you want the CEO to be paid less I don’t know what to say.

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#72

Post by hotnfresh »

csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

> CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control.

Why? In every other case we’re told wages are set by how much it takes to get someone who can do the job to accept the position. What the company gets out of that person’s work sets a cap on potential compensation, but doesn’t set the actual amount paid.

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#73

Post by ceejayoz »

csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

> If you’re on the board of an organization like that, settling for a second-best CEO to save a 7-figure sum just doesn’t make sense.

The idea that boards can effectively determine between first-best and second-best just doesn't make sense to me. Ranking job candidates is hard enough in much simpler circumstances.

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#74

Post by tremon »

csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

settling for a second-best CEO [..] doesn’t make sense

Is there any indication that the CEO was premier tier other than the size of his compensation package?

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#75

Post by NegativeK »

giardini wrote: post #34
adolph wrote: post #11

Do people believe that "nonprofit" is a category related to benevolence? It's just an accounting and corporate structure difference.

Yes. And we should eliminate nonprofits entirely: 1. Churches, hospitals et al should all pay taxes just as do other corporations. They are built on the same social structure as other entities, have the same protection of government and benefit from the social system. I pay; so should they. 2. Campaign Finance Reform: Secondly, laws should be changed so that corporations are no longer "persons". That is Citizens_Unit…

> I pay; so should they.

I feel like that's oversimplifying the distinction between a non-profit and us?

If we donate all of our income to charity, we don't pay taxes. That's because taxes are used to incentivize and disincentivize specific behaviors. We, as a society, want cheaper healthcare for people -- especially those who can't afford it. That means incentivizing hospitals (via tax) to help those people.

I'm up for a removing non-profit status from hospitals if we otherwise pay for people's healthcare, but nobody really seems to be making progress there.

(I'm not addressing your comments on campaign finance because I agree with you that it's broken and I think it's off-topic for this thread.)

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#76

Post by vsareto »

csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

>But our mayor oversees thousands of employees

Chances are they engage with much less and obviously don't have interactions with thousands of people and are keeping all of that straight in their head, so this is not a good reason.

You don't get credit because you oversaw a public worker whom you've never engaged with.

>makes decisions that influence hundreds of millions of dollars of spending

They also have access to (sometimes) smart people to filter through information and distill it down for them which is honestly the hardest part, not the decision making. It is unlikely they are compensated compared to the work they put in.

I'm not saying the job is easy, but they aren't doing it all themselves and the core problem is that the people underneath them are probably making no where near $450k. Salary just doesn't correlate to actual effort these days.

That said, $450k for a mayor is fine. Someone who can become a mayor can easily be a corporate executive making millions.

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#77

Post by cscurmudgeon »

spiderice wrote: post #62
csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

This all may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that I have no interest in donating my money to an organization that is going to give a sizable chunk of it to some rich CEO rather than the people that I'm trying to donate to.

Even public money goes to such charities.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/CEO-of-S-F-nonprofit-...

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#78

Post by _jal »

csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

There is an ongoing scam that pushes C-suite pay ever higher, and it needs to stop.

It builds on exactly the reasoning you lay out, and goes something like this:

- "We need the best CEO we can find. We have to understand how to set compensation to attract them."

- So the board hires an executive compensation consultant.

- "If you want better than average, you have to pay above average." So they target something like 85th percentile compensation for their market.

- No board goes into an executive search saying "We want a mediocre CEO, so we'll pay below market." Over time, executive compensation ratchets upwards everywhere. <- YOU ARE HERE

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#79

Post by optymizer »

csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

> CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control

Why?

Re: Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

#80

Post by Escapado »

csharpminor wrote: post #59

CEO salaries should be understood in relationship to the resources that they control. For example, this CEO chose to spend $85M on travel nurses to counter the union strike happening at a hospital in their network. Presumably the CEO thinks that this gamble is worth it in forcing the union’s hand. That may be a terrible decision, but it shows the extent of resources a CEO of a $6bn organization commands. This is one…

We don’t adjust salary for what proportions people manage or are responsible for in a lot of other fields, at least not to the same extend. And especially if we would go by responsibility. I earn about 3 times as much as the average school teacher in my home town and about 4 times as much as the people driving the buses there while I sit in front of my screen and fix irrelevant css bugs or spin up the next semi-useful microservice for a cross financed project that nobody really cares about except and that doesn’t really help anybody. Their responsibility and utility is much greater than mine. If they fuck up it has much larger and potentially grave consequences. If I fuck up there will be a Jira ticket and a semi-interested PM who will assign it to me 3 weeks down the line. Furthermore this relation does not automatically imply fairness. And on the outside it also appears very asymmetric in personal risk. A megacorp CEO might tank the entire company and can often still walk away with millions. So if we wanted a “fairness” optimized solution then maybe it should take into account the public utility, difficulty of the job, amount of work required and personal risk. And maybe, (just maybe) we don’t need anyone being arbitrarily wealthy and having more assets than some developing countries.
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