Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Frist to Teach Courses on How to Grow Number of Uninsureds


Ex Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will teach courses on health policy to undergraduate and graduate students at Princeton. This is a common step for politico's wanting to elevate their "expertise" on a topic. Frist already is a cardiac surgeon and a descendent of the founder of giant for-profit hospital chain HCA.

Topics will include how the Republican leadership floated health savings accounts as a ruse while the number of uninsured grew from 40 to 47 million on Bush's watch. A section of the course will be devoted to hiring industry top guns to write legislation, with the prime example being Tom Scully and the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug benefit. Also covered will be timing in quitting to wrap up that high six figure private sector job, negotiated while working for the public sector.

As a surprise bonus, the final case will reveal the results of the investigation into Dr. Frist's sale of HCA stock from a "blind trust" while banging the Senate gavel on health care legislation. How many HCA hospitals do kidney dialysis and benefited from his approval of automatic payment increases?

Princeton kids will need to line up fast to hear the wisdom of Bill Frist, otherwise known as how to profit from healthcare while nonprofit community hospitals bleed finacially from the burden of caring for the uninsured. He got by sending business to his friends, do we really need Princeton students to learn about that?

Will he be like Tommy Jr. and say things like "a smart student would buy HCA stock right now"? He'll have to wait for KKR to conduct an IPO to offer the kids such sage investment advice. Plus, Bill's expertise seems to be in timing the sells.

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