Obama Goes to Bat for Big Tobacco in TPP

[Divernan]

45. And let us not forget all the huge, high paying "non-profit" businesses with zip stockholders.

Take for example, UPMC, a NON PROFIT health care consortium which started out as a couple of specialist hospitals associated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, and has now grown until it is international in scope - from Saudi Arabia to Italy to UK to Ireland - or as they put it, providing health care around the globe, and last year paid 26 of its employees more than a million dollars each. It's chief executive raked in $6.07 million.

In 2012, UPMC's lobbying expenditures totalled $1,490,000. And guess what! Not a shareholder to be found! And that's just in the US - heaven only knows how much "baksheesh" they paid in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000022298&year=2012

And may I say, their policies suck. They don't have to pay property taxes on vast amounts of valuable real estate, but they do claim to provide charitable care to some in the community. Of course, UPMC determines the value of what care they provide, and those $32 each Tylenol tablets and $150 heating pads really add up quickly. They purchased old, smaller hospitals in poor communities and promptly closed them, forcing people to travel farther to more expensive facilities. You get the picture?