Analysis
The Ongoing Assault
The Nevada business community must
organize for political self-defense.
By Steven Miller
Business Nevada
After some
700-plus pages examining 20th Century
Communism’s amazing record of mass-murder and terror,
the distinguished European scholar-authors of the
international bestseller, The Black Book of Communism,
ask the simple question: “Why?”
Their answer—the fruit of a long trek through recently opened
Soviet-bloc archives covering over seven decades of Communist
crimes—has significance for contemporary Nevada.
“The real motivation for the terror,” wrote the Black Book’s
authors, “… stemmed from Leninist ideology and the utopian
will to apply to society a doctrine totally out of step with
reality.” And Leninist ideology itself, they make clear, was
little more than the desire to use lethal force against people
to mold them into forms dictated by crackpot economic and
social theories.
Speaking of utopian schemes totally out of step with reality,
let’s now move our attention to Assembly Bill 322, sponsored
by Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins and passed out of the
Legislature’s lower chamber April 26. Unanimously in favor
were the Assembly’s 26 Democrats; unanimously opposed, the
chamber’s 16 Republicans.
In AB 322, Nevada’s would-be Governor Perkins advanced the
novel proposition that, because major Silver State hospitals
are of great importance to the health of Nevadans, their
property rights should be voided and their investors and
operating personnel legally reduced to state servitude.
“Each major hospital,” says Sec. 7, paragraph 1, of Perkins’
bill, “shall … For the fiscal year beginning on July 1, 2006
and for each succeeding fiscal year, provide community
benefits and charity care, in that fiscal year, in an amount
which represents at least 4 percent of the total operating
revenue of the major hospital for that fiscal year.”
Should any hospital not go along with the program, the state
Division of Health Care Financing and Policy (DHCFP) “shall …
assess the major hospital with a civil penalty in an amount
equal to the difference between the amount of community
benefits and charity care the major hospital was required to
provide and the amount of community benefits and charity care
the major hospital actually provided.”
The DHCFP would also inform “the Attorney General of all cases
of suspected noncompliance with the requirements of this
section,” and deposit the “civil penalties” into the State
General Fund.
In the best Soviet fashion, AB 322 would have compelled the
hospitals to submit an annual plan “On or before July 1 of
each year,” to the state Department of Human Resources for
“the provision of community benefits and charity care adopted
by the major hospital….” along with any such plans by the
hospitals’ out-of-state parent corporations, if any.
Next, “On or before November 1 of each year,” the hospitals
must report to the DHCFP “on the community benefits and
charity care provided…” Finally, “on or before February 1,
2007, each major hospital shall submit” to the DHCFP “and to
the Director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau for transmittal
to the next regular session of the Legislature[!] a report on
the community benefits and charity care provided by the major
hospital ….”
Assembly Bill 322 “died” in the state senate last week, unable
to get out of committee. Yet its ideas remain in play as
possible elements for a Senate “compromise” bill. Even more
important, AB 322 remains an exceptionally important indicator
of the ominous situation confronting the Nevada business
community.
First, perhaps what is most remarkable is the widely expressed
belief that Assemblyman Perkins and the Assembly Democrats saw
this particular legislation as something that could advance
their political prospects. To be sure, demagogy over hospital
expenses—expenses largely driven up by inept government
programs—has long been a staple of Nevada politics. But AB 322
displayed such massive contempt for the rights of private
property as to set a new low. It is difficult to believe that
a majority of Nevada voters would ever knowingly elect
politicians who threaten to turn people who organize as
corporations into slaves of the state—merely because their
services are important. Yet Assembly Democrats apparently
did believe this, revealing the fundamental extremism that
now often dominates their activities.
Second, substantial evidence suggests that one covert purpose
of AB 322 was, like AB 342, to “tenderize” major Southern
Nevada hospitals in preparation for future negotiations with
the Health Services Coalition. The HSC represents all Southern
Nevada’s politically powerful government and private sector
unions—the major political interest group supporting Assembly
Democrats—in health-service purchasing negotiations with
hospitals. This February the unions expressed unhappiness
about their inability, during tough negotiations, to compel
large hospitals to accept union-preferred rates. At the time,
Perkins indicated plans to introduce legislation to increase
the Coalition’s clout.
The Nevada Assembly has degenerated into an ongoing extortion
ring. Every legislative session it shakes Silver State
businesses down for an ever-larger proportion of their
earnings, while singling out some new industry for “special
attention.”
In 2003 it was the banks on the barbecue spit; in 2005 it is
the hospitals. Next session in will be your business.
The Nevada business community must organize for political
self-defense.
