| We might just be witnessing the beginning of the end for New Jersey's medical and dental school. The first report came out this week from the federal monitor appointed to untangle the financial mess that is the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and if reports to come are equally as bad -- and there's no reason to expect they won't be -- then surgery to cure the problem may not leave much of the patient intact.
Which do you like better? The fact that UMDNJ probably owes $125 million to the state and federal government instead of the $75 million previously thought? Or that hospital brass dined out with a convicted healthcare racketeer whose partner has ties to the mob? Or that job applicants came with number rankings reflecting the political clout of their mentors? It's all there in the monitor's report, and the Star-Ledger is rightly having a field day with it. Sen. Bob Menendez's staff better be spending some quality time with the document, because he's one of the many politicos mentioned as treating UMDNJ as a patronage pit, and Kid Kean's oppo research team would be crazy not to capitalize on this stuff. |
| As this New York Times writer points out, the UMDNJ is not remarkable so much for exposing patronage -- that's hardly news -- but for the level of documentation the patronage received:
. . . rarely has an institution offered as explicit a lesson in the spoils system as New Jersey's state medical school, which codified its highly elaborate system of political favoritism in a series of memos, e-mail messages and spreadsheets. The university's president, Dr. John Petillo, assigned job applicants a numerical ranking of 1 to 3 based on the political pull of their sponsors, according to documents released this week by a federal monitor, and ordered his staff members to deliver a formalized set of courtesies that the applicants' status entitled them to. The documents are remarkable not so much for their content as for their very existence. Many people know applicants who landed government jobs on the basis of whom they knew, but it is highly unusual to get such an inside glimpse at how the favoritism skews the selection process. In an age when most political officials are well schooled in spin control and careful not to commit any of their embarrassing moments to paper, here was one of the nation's largest medical institutions, a place entrusted with providing health care to hundreds of thousands of people each year, keeping a written playbook on how administrators padded the payroll with people whose connections outshone their qualifications.
You will recall that, back in December, UMDNJ agreed to let former federal Judge Herbert J. Stern monitor its finances. After the first 90 days of work, Stern's team of lawyers and forensic accountants -- "forensic accountant," how's that for a job title? -- have turned up enough evidence of abuse and patronage at the hospital to fuel another season of The Sopranos, and they're only getting started. UMDNJ accepted Stern's appointment only after U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, apparently the only qualified appointee to come out of the Bush administration, threatened to indict the hospital for Medicare fraud. Everybody knew Stern was going to bring the pain. Well, here it comes.
If this does prove to be the end for UMDNJ, I suggest the Newark headquarters be converted into a Museum of Patronage. Guests could walk through corridors designed to reflect the various avenues of access. Maybe they could be issued numbered tickets at the door which would control how many doors would open for them. At the end of the tour, guests would walk through a revolving door leading to a lobby devoted to former government officials who now sell their access and connections to the highest bidder. Lobby? Lobbyists? Get it?
What, you don't think this idea has legs? Well, let's just start placing a few phone calls. If we talk to the right people, I'm sure we can make it happen.
****
Cross-posted at The Opinion Mill. |
.gif)
