Hospital Leaders Help Fund Effort to Aid Democrats

Since Senator Grassley launched an investigation of not-for-profit hospitals, a political action committee funded by the hospital's trustees and executives has given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to try to regain a Democratic majority in the Senate, which would have the effect of ousting Mr. Grassley from his post as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

The hospital claims that the political action committee is independent of it. "The PAC is independent of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. I have no information about it and would not be the one to provide information," a spokeswoman for the hospital, Kathleen Robinson, said.

But federal election records show that the treasurer of the political action committee, William Polf, is the hospital's senior vice president for external relations. And virtually every one of the 170 donations to the political action committee disclosed in the federal election records come from a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital trustee, doctor, or employee.

"Senator Grassley has been and continues to look at the political activities of nonprofits, exploring what is and is not appropriate. The relationship that you describe between the hospital and this PAC raises questions for us," a spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee, Jill Gerber, told The New York Sun.

The political action committee's contributors include donors known as Republican-leaning activists. NewYork-Presbyterian's chairman, John J. Mack, who is chairman of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, was a "ranger" who raised more than $200,000 for President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Another NewYork-Presbyterian trustee, real estate executive Peter Kalikow, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes in New York.

Mr. Kalikow has given $20,000 and Mr. Mack has given $10,000 to the Teaching Hospital Education Political Action Committee, the committee funded by NewYork-Presbyterian trustees and employees. The political...

"The hospital claims that the political action committee is independent of it. "The PAC is independent of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. I have no information about it and would not be the one to provide information," a spokeswoman for the hospital, Kathleen Robinson, said. "

There is that name again. NY Presbyterian has been in the news alot lately. Katie Couric hired a physician there as her medical correspondent and then again, this from yesterday:

"WASHINGTON - The CEO of New York-Presbyterian Hospital went on lavish junkets to Switzerland and some of America's most exotic tourist locales, blowing the nonprofit's cash on luxury hotels and even tennis accessories. Dr. Herbert Pardes, who banked a whopping $4.5 million salary in 2004, stayed at some of the country's finest hotels and incurred thousands of dollars in airfare expenses jetting business class to conferences. Meanwhile, the nonprofit was able to save millions in taxes........yet it hired a contractor to go after poor, sometimes uninsured patients who couldn't pay their bills....."

NY Pres is the bastion of Liberalism.

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