The Los Angeles City Council has approved an referendum which would let LA voters limit executive pay to that of the President of the United States, and hospital executives are losing it at the prospect of their pay being limited to "Only" $450,000.00 a year.
As I have noted many times, studies have shown that extremely high remuneration actually produces worse performance, so I find this an unalloyed good:
Los Angeles voters will decide next spring whether to clamp down on pay for hospital executives, capping their total wages and other compensation at $450,000 annually, after the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to put the proposed measure on the March 2024 ballot.
The L.A. ballot measure is backed by a union representing healthcare workers, which argues pay for hospital executives has been excessive and out of line with the mission of providing affordable care.
SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West contends that hospital executives should not be making any more than the total compensation of the president of the United States, which the ballot measure states is currently $450,000.
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The Hospital Assn. of Southern California called the proposal “deeply flawed” and argued that it would make it harder for Los Angeles hospitals to recruit and retain top talent, who would instead opt to work at healthcare facilities in other cities.
Yeah, the top talent, who have never diagnosed a patient, performed a surgery, or even mopped a ward's floor. They are indispensable, because ……… Capitalism?
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After supporters of the measure succeeded in gathering enough signatures, council members had the option of either putting the proposal on the ballot or simply adopting it. The council voted 10 to 0 to send the proposal to the ballot for voters to decide, with Councilmember John Lee recusing himself as a board member at West Hills Hospital.
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The proposed measure would cap executive compensation for a range of top officials, including CEOs, chief financial officers, executive vice presidents and administrators, at privately owned hospitals and their affiliated clinics, skilled nursing facilities and residential facilities for the elderly located in the city of Los Angeles.
The cap would not apply to any medical professionals whose “primary duties” are providing medical services or direct care to patients.
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The annual cap would apply not just to wages, but a range of compensation for Los Angeles hospital executives including paid time off, bonuses, travel, housing payments, stock options and severance.
SEIU-UHW said at least 22 executives would be affected by the measure, but the number is likely higher because its analysis of publicly available information did not include for-profit hospitals. It is now pursuing similar measures in the cities of Chula Vista and La Mesa, Saldaña said.
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It has spotlighted pay packages exceeding $1 million annually for executives at hospitals and health systems such as Cedars-Sinai, where the top executive received more than $6 million in compensation through the medical center and related organizations in a recent year, according to tax filings.
Cedars-Sinai said in a statement that setting its executive compensation involves “an assessment by outside, independent experts,” and that if the ballot measure passed, “we would be unable to recruit and retain clinical, academic and management leaders who have made us a world-renowned academic medical center.”
These, "Outside, independent experts," are neither outside nor independent. These boards are comprised of other executives whose own pay is similarly effected, or consultants whose contracts are dependent on those executives whose pay they are determining.
But wait, there's more:
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The latest proposal to curb executive pay comes as the hospital industry has sought to fend off $25-an-hour healthcare worker wage measures that are backed by SEIU-UHW. An L.A. measure championed by the union was put on hold after hospital groups successfully pushed for a referendum.
The California Hospital Assn. has also been fighting a state bill, SB 525, that would hike wages to at least $25 an hour in coming years for workers at a range of healthcare facilities and agencies, including hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, clinics and home health agencies.
The people getting these multi-million dollar salaries are not supermen as conceived by Rand or Nietzsche, they are parasites who have gamed the system to benefit themselves.
Cutting their pay is an unalloyed good.
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