Marathon Pundit: Occupy Chicago says Michelle Obama's former employer is part of the one percent

Monday, October 31, 2011

Occupy Chicago says Michelle Obama's former employer is part of the one percent

U of C's New Pavilion,
Cost: $446 million

The Obama administration is playing with fire as it embraces the extremist Occupy Wall Street movement. When Michelle Obama was a vice president at the University of Chicago Medical Center, she was in charge of the Urban Health Initiative, which steered emergency room patients from the prestigious hospital to other South Side health care institutions.

To avoid paying property taxes, Illinois hospitals need to fulfil a "charitable mission." The U of C Medical Center enjoys that tax exemption.

Meanwhile the Occupy Chicago folks have a Facebook post about the the First Lady's former employer today in regards to its demand that it add a trauma center:

U of C values its profits more than our people. They are the 1%. We are the 99% and we demand a trauma center.

Okay, maybe the hospital should have a trauma center.

But if the University of Chicago Medical Center is a member of the so-called one percent, so are the Obamas.

I'm aware that people choose to go to hospital emergency rooms in non-emergency situations all of the time. But was Michelle Obama--who hired David Axelrod's firm to promote the Urban Health Initiative--working in the best interest of its community?

From the Washington Post in 2008:

The hospital told state regulators it spent $10 million on charity care for the poor in fiscal 2007 -- 1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for the Washington Post by the bipartisan, nonprofit Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. That is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in Cook County.

As a nonprofit, the University of Chicago Medical Center receives annual tax breaks worth nearly five times as much as it spends on charity care, the analysis found.