Category: Uncategorized

Financial stresses abound.

In the space of a week, Moody’s Investor Services released credit opinions for the University of Louisville and the University of Louisville Foundation; and Catholic Health Initiatives published its Annual Report for the Fiscal year ending June 30, 2016.  The results were not very pretty. The rating for the bulk of the University’s existing bonds dropped one grade to A1 with an outlook determined to be stable. The Foundation did not fare as well. Its rating dropped three steps to A3 with an outlook revised to negative. Catholic Health Initiatives disclosed operating and non-operating losses totaling $667 million. CHI had declines in its own bond ratings earlier this year, due largely to excessive debt reported to stand at $9 Billion as it seeks to partner or merge with another Catholic hospital chain. The drops in grade and financial losses are by themselves troubling.  However, language in the details of the reports links the organizations together, highlights the harmful consequences of recent management and political manipulations on the University, overestimates the health of current business relationships between the parties, and underestimates the impact of promised roll-backs to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act on the financial health of our local hospitals and the University.  For these reasons, I fear that things are going to get worse before they get better. Continue reading “Credit Ratings for UofL, UofL Foundation, and CHI Downgraded.”

Later this morning, the Board of Directors of the University of Louisville Foundation will meet to discuss matters crucial to its future relationship to the University of Louisville. Following the forced resignation of former UofL Pres. James Ramsey, a Foundation board comprised largely of friends and appointees of Ramsey seems more interested in protecting his legacy and image than in facing up to the wholesale loss of confidence in the Foundation by the community. Having been forced to partially lift the curtain on its internal activities, and in the face of refusal to fully disclose its confusing if not inappropriate financial machinations to University of Louisville trustees, the Foundation still clings to the incomprehensible belief that it has the right to select and oversee the outside entity that will audit its financial activities. If allowed to do so, the Foundation would thus define both the scope of such an examination and control the dissemination of its result. After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune. All this from a Board of Directors that appeared prepared to retain Ramsey as President of the Foundation and award him even more money from the University’s assets. Of course, it is possible that more than just protecting Ramsey’s reputation is at stake. As yet undocumented allegations of financial mismanagement or worse are circulating. Certainly it is in the interest of the entire University community that no doubts remain after a long-overdue, no-holds-barred audit of the vaults of the Foundation. It is follow the money time! Continue reading “Ramsey Supporters on UofL Foundation Resisting Oversight by University Trustees.”

We are not ready in so many ways.

Given that the Zika virus and the mosquitoes that carry it from one human to another have been advancing north from South America through the Caribbean and Mexico, and that parts of the USA share the same permissive semi-tropical environments necessary for the disease to spread, most public health scientists and officials have assumed that home-grown Zika disease and its sequela would show up in the course of time.  Officials in North Miami, Florida believe that time has come. Even with all the warning in the world, Congress could not be persuaded to act before leaving Washington for vacation.  Imagine, public health being sacrificed at the altar of political control and the national shackling of anything having to do with women’s health policy  to a self-defined pro-life lobby and the religious dogma that supports it.  The failure to prepare now, as it has been in the past, is all about control of the levers of power that drives political life.

Background.
People, including pregnant women who have contracted Zika virus, have been present in the USA for some time, having caught the disease while traveling abroad in endemic areas, or having acquired the disease sexually from partners who did the traveling for them.  (Yes, Zeka is also a sexually-transmitted disease.)  Since the virus can linger for months in various places within the human body, we can assume that transfer of the disease by nonsexual intimate contact or exposure to body fluids is also possible. Blood donors in parts of Florida are already being told not to do so, and testing of donated blood for the virus more broadly is being advocated. It is likely that Zika is here to stay for a while, if not forever. “So what?” you may ask. Continue reading “They’re Here! Zika-bearing Mosquitoes now present in USA.”

Old habits die hard.

For those hoping for a “fresh start” at the University of Louisville, last Wednesday’s Board of Trustees meeting must have been more than a little disappointing. Earlier in the day, the Attorney General requested that the Board take no actions with long-term consequences until the matter of the legality of its appointment process is adjudicated by the courts. The day before the meeting, one of the newly appointed trustees resigned, presumably because his public statements about science, religion, and minorities generated too much public opposition – in my opinion a failure of the vetting process. He was replaced by another nominee from the list of 30 generated by the Governor’s Postsecondary Education Nominating Committee who also happens to be a partner in the law firm that handles the bulk of the University’s outsourced legal work. The replacement trustee is a well-respected and competent individual, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with attorneys serving on nonprofit boards. However, if I were an attorney seeking some of the University’s business, or a party in opposition to the University in some litigation, I would see such an appointment as more of the inside baseball that is often attributed to UofL. Continue reading “First Meeting of UofL Board. Fresh Start or Not?”