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MONDAY December 8, 2003 - Subscribe - Contact Us Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels November 18, 2003 Health care providers must rethink salaries The (La Grande) Observer Something smells fishy in Health Care Land. Executives at four leading Oregon providers, Legacy, Providence, Kaiser Permanente and Oregon Health & Science University, are pulling down salaries in the range of $600,000 to $1.3 million a year. At the same time, costs of medical care and insurance are rising at about 15 percent a year. What kind of message is this sending to the health-care consumer whose own income might be rising by 3 percent a year if he has a job? Or to retired people whose fixed incomes are growing something less than that? Or to employers who are sinking under the weight of insurance-coverage costs? The health care industry should consider the consequences of CEOs taking these exorbitant salaries. To be sure, the masters of philosophical contortion will continue to give the usual suspect reasons why salaries need to be so high. Keeping up with the Joneses. Monstrous responsibilities. Competition for the best and brightest. A job description that would make mere mortals croak. Granted, inequality in income will continue to be a reality in America, regardless of chest-beating on editorial pages and Sunday morning TV programs. But sometimes social responsibility is more important than individual rights, and this may be a case where executives need to restudy the message they are sending consumers. If CEOs show they can get by with less, Health Care Land will begin to take on a better aroma. Bush's use of Saddam is obvious shadowplay - The (Beijing) People's Daily Dead or alive, the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein remains useful to U.S. President George W. Bush as a good excuse for continuing the occupation of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition forces. With his fate still unknown six months after the war, the former Iraqi president has proven to be the United States' largest excuse for military operations against Iraq. ... Claiming that Saddam is still alive, U.S. President George W. Bush accused him on Monday of trying to making trouble for the US-led coalition forces in Iraq - being behind a series of bomb attacks against a wide range of targets in Iraq. Bush vowed that the United States would not run from its "vital" mission in the country but only hunt and get him. Bush's words are nothing but an excuse aimed at exculpating himself from responsibilities for the mounting casualties of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and continuously keeping a U.S. military presence in the country. ... DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Road Cams