CEO apologizes for 'outrageous' comment about dentists' work habits

http://www.king5.com/news/investigators/CEO-apologizes-for-outrageous-comment-about-dentists-work-151748305.html

And the outrage grows...Washington Dental Service CEO James Dwyer has ignited a firestorm response with his recent interview comment that dentists could make more money by, “Number one, they could start working five days a week,”. Unfortunately, when you review the raw interview footage at the link below it only gets worse as he states that dentists usually work 3 1/2 days a week. Wondering aloud, to no one in particular, just how many days a week does James Dwyer work for his $1.2 million dollar base salary? 

We digress however. The nut of the issue here isn't how many days a dentist works, nor how many James Dwyer works. The issues are:

1. A dentists ability to provide excellent patient care and still make a reasonable profit so they can pay their employees living wages and benefits; and

2. WDS not paying taxes. Last year WDS made $1 Billion dollars in Washington as a "non-Profit" and  provided an infinitesimal "social return" on that profit. (See our May 15th blog on WDS's "return" for 2011).

It's time to address these issues in Washington State to ensure patients are able to continue to receive excellent care. And that business operating as "non-profits" actually provide the social return that their IRS status mandates or the status is revoked and they pay the same taxes their insured and providers are required to pay. Governor Christine Gregoire? Attorney General Rob McKenna? Where are you on these issues?

 

King 5 TV's WDS story

Executive Pay Soars While Dental Patient Care Reimbursements Are Cut

As a follow up to last week's post, here is the video line (see bottom of post) from King 5 TV on the soaring executive pay for Washington Dental Service (WDS) executives and board members all the while the reimbursement for patient care to dentists is cut. Reporter Chris Ingalls left some very important items unasked of Washington Dental Services CEO James Dwyer. Such as:

• How do you justify receiving a 45%  pay increase over the past 5 years, and increasing other key employees pay by 32% as the economy has tanked and WDS has held cost increases to dentists down?

• If WDS had "close to ONE BILLION dollars in revenue last year" ($1,000,000,000 or 1,000 millions) how can funding $5 million or .5% of their income to their foundation considered to be a balanced return on their tax free, not-for-profit status?

•  Dentists treat patients four days a week (40 hours) and on the 5th day they are taking continuing education courses to provide better care for their patients and taking non-patient time to manage their businesses? Is that working too little?

• How does making close to "close to one billion dollars in revenue last year" and not paying Federal taxes on $13.7 of net income help the residents of Washington State as a "social welfare" non-profit?

The bottom line is WDS is making money at the expense of Washington State's patients. What aspects of care will dentists be forced to cut to make sure they can see the patient and still make some margin of profit?
http://www.king5.com/news/investigators/Executive-pay-soars-as-one-of-WA-States-largest-non-profits-makes-cuts--150968095.html

Washington Dental Service and its Economic Impact

Dental insurance changes in Washington State have had a huge impact on Washington State dentists over the past year and those changes have started and will continue to trickle down to consumers. 

Tonight King TV  is airing a story at 11 pm on Washington Dental Services actions in Washington State and may run the story again Friday at 5 pm. The King TV feature is based on this story http://www.kmov.com/news/investigates/Delta-Dentals-extraordinary-executive-pay-and-perks-138584994.html about the excessive "not-for-profit" compensation of Delta Dental executives, board members, and travel benefits for their spouses in Missouri. A similar situation is occurring here in Washington State. And, since its a not-for-profit, WDS doesn't pay federal or state income taxes either. 

For those who haven't followed the Washington Dental Service (WDS) story in Washington, here's a quick summary. In 2011 WDS cut reimbursements to dentists by 15% after holding down care reimbursement increases to dentists for the previous 3 years. Similar to what the average consumer has experienced in our lives, the out of pocket costs (wages and materials) for dentists to provide care have escalated over the past three years. Interestingly, in 2009 though the WDS increased their CEO James Dwyer's pay by 15% to $985,704. In total that’s a 27.5% increase over the $771,792 he made in 2007; an impressive salary bump in two years. (Source: www.thelundreport.org/http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CIIBEBYwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelundreport.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fu6%2Fwashington%2520insurance%2520salaries-2.xls&ei=2fWrT9jbGIiLiALZvYiXAg&usg=AFQjCNF0OopAAmTFXrNcXqKal28Ig6LLNg/washington%20insurance%20salaries-2.xls , Line 86). 

So, how does this impact you and me, the consumer? If the cost of providing care can’t go down for dentists because wages and materials costs aren’t decreasing, and the level your insurance company reimburses dentists for providing care is cut, something is going to have to give. Dentists are turning to their suppliers to cut costs but the supplier’s costs have increased too. So the suppliers are turning to their manufacturers to cut their costs too, but they also have been fighting increased overhead expenses as well. So the manufacturers and suppliers are turning to their employees and cutting their wages, benefits, and jobs. Ironically, that means the very people who use dental insurance either lose their benefits when they lose their job or have their benefits cut and have to pay more out of their pocket which effectively creates a wage cut. These actions are a race to the bottom in the United States that’s been played out in the slow recovery of our economy and is reflected in the dental ‘industry’ much as as it has in the auto, construction, home furnishings, services, and retail industries among many, many others. As consumers we can’t expect to make high wages ourselves but buy everything at Wal-Mart prices. We live in an interrelated economy and everyone has to make a living wage to survive, let alone enough to make our economy thrive. 

What can we do? We can let WDS know that their actions have an impact on all of us and make different choices, if and when, we choose insurance plans. We can  pay fair prices for the services and products we buy, especially if we want to make fair wages in our jobs. And, we can buy US made products so the money we invest stays in the United States. that will support putting out of work people back to work again and have them contribute to our overall economic recovery. Last, we can get active and contact our state Attorney General, our Senators, and Congressmen and let they know the status of a "not-for-profit" really needs to reflect that designation and ask them to pursue removing these for all of the dental and health insurers operating under that tag. Have Washington Dental Service be required to pay the same state and federal government taxes that all other businesses are paying in Washington State.