"It is always better to look good than to feel good..."
Posted on 02/22/2009 8:03:38 AM PST by jessduntno
Motion Picture Fund hospital closing doors By Joann Groff joann@theacorn.com
The closing of MPTF's acutecare hospital and long-term care facility will require about 100 residents to be transferred. Acutecare patients—there are rarely more than 10 at one time—will receive their care at other locations after the hospital shutters later this year.
MPTF is blaming declining Medi-Cal reimbursements as a main reason for closing. The board claims the gap in each of the last four years between what MPTF received for services and what those services actually cost was $10 million.
Wrong...an outright lie...
http://www.thewrap.com/article/1316
The PR damage had been done, however. Patients and staff were despondent. The Wrap poked holes in the board's story, offering tax return evidence that showed none of the $10 million losses due to Medicaid and Medi-Cal reimbursements the board had cited.
The board said MPTF survived by dipping into its investment reserves. But based on projections, the reserves wll be exhausted within five years.
The decision to close the hospital was based on three years of study by MPTF staff and outside experts.
"MPTF is initiating these changes because it's the right thing to do, but the fact is that we have no choice," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, chair of the MPTF Foundation Board. "Although we are in good shape today, the acute-care hospital and long-term care facility are generating operating deficits that could bankrupt MPTF in a very few years. . . . If MPTF doesn't do something now, pretty soon it won't be able to do anything."
The hospital's closure will allow the fund to continue providing support and services to others, including the 215 residents of the Wasserman Campus, a Woodland Hills retirement community, and the 100 children at the Goldwyn Center, a child care program in West Los Angeles.
The MPTF supplied financial support to more than 1,100 people last year and had 65,000 patients use its six healthcare centers.
"We have an obligation to these people, and future generations of entertainment industry workers, to make sure MPTF is there for them," Mancuso said.
The board made its announcement on Jan. 14 but didn't have specific information until recently.
Board members stressed that the fund will continue its commitment to care for the seniors, including those who need to relocate. A team to ease the transition, including a doctor, nurses and a social worker, will be available to each patient. Those needing hospitalization or long-term care after the hospital is closed will be referred to MPTFapproved facilities.
MPTF estimates nearly 300 jobs will be lost as a result of the closure, about a third of its hourly workers and a third of its managerial staff.
They went on to deny The Wrap's claims that patients had refused to eat and were dropping like flies, and stressed that the fund will continue to operate its independent and assisted-care facilities in Woodland Hills and half a dozen health centres in the area. No mention, it seems, was made of the effects tearing these convalescing patients—former chorus girls, comedy writers, costume designers, mogul's secretaries—away from their friends and loyal caregivers might reap in their twilight days in Hollywood.
Yes...10 MILLION...half of what some of the stars make PER PICTURE...Katzenberger could take that out of petty cash...some of these people have lived here for years and are in need of severe care - they are dying at the prospect of having to move...the liberal left...disgusting...I will no be watching their "Oscar" show tonight - I have to wash the dog...
The numbers being bandied about by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the MPTF’s chief fundraiser, and other officials do not square with the organization’s own official accounting numbers and tax returns.
Those documents –
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11935640/THEWRAPCOM-Return-of-Organization-Exempt-from-Income-Tax-2006
the most recent filed with the Internal Revenue Service in November 2008 – show no $10 million losses, or any losses at all. The fund’s assets – described in one press release as “draining… at an alarming rate” – actually increased in 2006 and 2007, the last year for which figures are available.
And while it is true that Medi-Cal reimbursements have indeed declined since last summer for hospital care (though not for other medical and nursing-home services), the fund’s accounts show a net increase in government reimbursements for both 2006 and 2007.
One nursing care expert who has looked closely at the reimbursement numbers, Betsy Hite of the California Association of Health Facilities, characterized the MPTF’s explanation of the closures as “hogwash.”
Officials from the United Healthcare Workers union, which concluded a nine-month long contract negotiation with the MPTF last April, said they researched the fund’s finances extensively and found no cause for concern.
The MPTF opened a new state-of-the-art gym and fitness facility, the Saban Center for Health and Wellness, in July 2007. The multi-million dollar project seems inconsistent with an organization in financial trouble.
No such thing as "talk the talk - walk the walk" in Hollywood. Hey Hollywood.....where are you?
Where is clooney, paltrow, winfrey, penn, moore and the rest when it comes down to helping out “their own” kind? Oh yea, if it ain’t someone elses money coming to the rescue, they aren’t interested.
Give up?
In January they made the execrably bad "I Pledge" video telling us how much they CARE about people now that O is President and what they were personally going to do about it in O's name.
OK, spaceballs, now's the time to pony up and put your vast riches where your mouths are.
Oscar is quite elderly now, possibly terminally ill.
I wonder where he will go for his final days?
"It is always better to look good than to feel good..."
“Oscar is quite elderly now, possibly terminally ill. I wonder where he will go for his final days?”
Into the gutter, I hope. Let these billionaires go back to being the guttersnipes they were before they unionized...
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