Tag: Affordable Care Act

What I see is an elected official in deep denial: How much is a money losing community hospital worth?

And how much federal tax money will have been pissed away on construction that will never fetch more than 20 cents on the dollar in the real estate market.

Lafontaine: Selling hospital is ‘not viable’ ~ Dwayne Bremer

Last month, a consultant told the Hancock County Hospital Board that he believed HMC was worth between $14 million to $22 million.

Hancock County Board of Supervisors President Blaine Lafontaine said Friday that he believes that number is “very low.”

According to Lafontaine, HMC received much more than $22 million from the federal government to rebuild the hospital.

“I don’t have the exact figures, but it could be between $80 million to $100 million,” Lafontaine said. “Selling the hospital is not a viable option at this time. Our conversation needs to be on how to enhance the hospital.”

The truth is $14 million may be too high when you factor in the consistency of the 15% operating losses which can’t be sustained unless one subscribes to the Mayor Fillingame theory of economics. Further, any valuation that is a function of earnings or cash flow indicate a money losing business is worth exactly zero. Worse is the fact the supervisors are fooling themselves thinking the problem can be solved by growing the population of the county. Continue reading “What I see is an elected official in deep denial: How much is a money losing community hospital worth?”

FUBAR: A Jackson County Political Tradition

More than anything else the events of this week revealed exactly why the Jackson County Board of Supervisors hired Billy Guice. Campaign season can no longer be put on hold for incumbent Supervisors, who hired Guice to run interference for them, ultimately using Guice to throw their own political appointees under the bus in one last effort to save their jobs. The cost to the taxpayers for this political expenditure is $345,000 and counting. I’m fairly certain the retirees that are fixing to get screwed are not very happy with Guice’s recounting of the obvious for the Sups, which has been covered in detail on both these pages as well as the Sun Herald for the past 7 plus months.

Let’s start with the Sun Herald, which was excluded from Bronco Billy Guice’s Wild West Show, a fact they were clearly unhappy about:

Jackson County has spent $345,000 on SRHS probe ~ Anita Lee

Jackson County taxpayers should have saved their money ~ Sun Herald Editorial Board

A short snippet is in order but the entire Op-Ed is fine reading:

Looks as though the Jackson County Board of Supervisors brokered a deal for the taxpayers to buy a wheelbarrow full of fool’s gold for the low, low price of $345,000.

A subscription to the Sun Herald would have saved the taxpayers a ton of money — we don’t see anything in the report about the investigation into the Singing River Health System pension fund that hasn’t been covered in the paper.

Even better Jackson County taxpayers could have saved the S/H subscription and read up on things right here on Slabbed. 😉

Moving right along WLOX got in on the show with the following report which uncritically parrots Guice’s press release that ran in the Mississippi Press, which coincidentally is also a public relations prelude to screwing the SRHS retirees in my opinion:

Attorney Billy Guice gets on bad side of both SRHS executives and retirees ~ Mike Lacy

Poor Billy Guice had no clue he needed firefighting training before taking on this $345,000 no-bid CONsulting job with Jackson County as we turn our attention next to the Jackson County press release disguised as a trio of new reports which ran yesterday in Pravda, err, I mean the Mississippi Alabama Press: Continue reading “FUBAR: A Jackson County Political Tradition”