Commission, it's time to yield the helm of the SS Jackson

Commission, it's time to yield the helm of the SS Jackson

By Michael Lewis
Commentary
   In a bathtub toy navy, even a sinking hospital ship is better than no ship.
   That's why Miami-Dade commissioners are dragging their feet on the path to rescue Jackson Health System. They know any real solution will tug their toy away from them.
   The public hospital system that commissioners control is sinking in a sea of red ink. Much of the blame falls on commission admirals who push the leaky system around as a toy, just like their toy seaport and airport.
   Because the crew of the SS Jackson Memorial is top-heavy with voting union members, commissioners have long clung to padded payrolls, handicapping Jackson despite its top-level medical care.
   Then commissioners last week voted to clap their new Financial Recovery Board overseeing Jackson in irons when labor contracts come into view. The commission, they said, stays at the giveaway wheel.
   So even as report after report details cash draining out of Jackson and experts log the days remaining before it can no longer meet payroll, commissioners paddle against the current dilemma: yield the helm or go down with the ship.
   Commissioners long shielded themselves from Jackson's financial failings by deflecting blame to the Public Health Trust they wouldn't let do its job unfettered. Now commissioners have substituted the recovery board for the trust but keep putting in their own oar and pulling in another direction.
   Commissioners also are training their guns on the report of another of their creations, the 20-member Hospital Governance Taskforce that was floated to tell them how Jackson should be commanded.
   Their own taskforce experts, in virtual mutiny, recommended that commissioners yield much of their dominance to a new implementation team that's to find a way to convert Jackson to a nonprofit totally free of commission control.
   You don't have to imagine how commissioners view mutiny. They'd make the taskforce walk the plank — if Jackson could afford a plank.
   Instead, they plan to deep six the recommendations via the oldest of tortures: study the plan to death.
   "I want to put the questions to the people...

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