South Idaho’s Healthcare Colossus: St. Luke
This is the first of a two part series on the consolidation of Healthcare facilities in Idaho, and the globalist agencies behind it. Part two is: North Idaho’s Healthcare Kraken: Kootenai Health.
By North Idaho Slow Growth Research
Bundy vs. the Borg
Because Ammon Bundy helped expose the medical kidnapping of Baby Cyrus, he is being sued by a humungous healthcare conglomerate for tens of millions of dollars. The defendant in this case was a well-known candidate for governor at the time, but who is the plaintiff? What exactly is the St. Luke “Health System”?
For over a century, St. Luke was a community hospital serving the residents of Boise. In the mid-1990s, however, the board of trustees arranged to join forces with the Blaine County Commissioners to construct a new hospital at Wood River. Blaine County is home of Sun Valley. It is the wealthiest county in Idaho, and it had all the resources necessary to maintain an independently governed community hospital. But “independence” is not what the St. Luke trustees or the plutocrats of Sun Valley had in mind.
By the early 2000s, the foundation of a medical monopoly that would eventually spread throughout much of Southern Idaho had been laid. St. Luke began expanding beyond the Boise area by building two new hospitals—one at Wood River and the other at Meridian, —and by taking over control of local clinics. Then, over the next decade, it assumed control of hospitals in McCall, Magic Valley, Nampa, and Mountain Home. Now St. Luke is a monstrous medical mega-corporation that manages eight hospitals, hundreds of clinics, and thousands of medical professionals.
The St. Lukes healthcare colossus absorbs the lion’s share of Idaho’s annual $4+ billion-dollar health services budget, so tax-payers foot the bill for much of the day-to-day operation. Yet it uses its nearly limitless resources to bankrupt someone who dares to criticize their mishandling of a vulnerable child.
Is the St. Luke vs. Ammon Bundy SLAPP lawsuit drama a one-off that can safely be ignored or is it a sign of increasingly tyrannical control over medical and social services in Idaho. Why is St. Luke so determined to silence critics? Let’s take a closer look.
The Rise of a Medical Monopoly
With a workforce of over 16,000 St. Luke is the largest employer in Idaho. In 2022 it presided over 50 thousand hospital admissions, 45 thousand surgeries, and nearly 3 million outpatient appointments. It is the dominant healthcare provider in dozens of communities, and its annual budget now exceeds $4 Billion dollars—up from $2 Billion in 2016.
The St. Luke “Health System” is a medical monstrosity that is still expanding, and its fantastic growth over the last few years begs the question: If consolidation improves efficiency, why has the cost of healthcare continued to skyrocket? Could it be that healthcare monopolies drive prices up, not down?
And what does such consolidation mean for healthcare freedom? If all healthcare professionals work for the same conglomerate, with the same services, same policies, and same recommended “best practices”, how much choice do either patients or medical providers really have?
And who governs this beast? Most of St. Luke’s income comes from state and federal entitlement programs, yet it is administered by a privately controlled non-profit corporation that is entirely unaccountable to taxpayers. The trustees of St. Lukes are appointed rather than elected, so one may ask, “What qualifies a person to sit on St. Luke’s board of directors and exert control over the medical options of a million Idahoans?”
Money? Could it be money? Yes, it could! There appear to be more bankers, private equity managers, and members of the Federal Reserve on the St. Luke board than there are medical professionals. And what does it mean that four of the sixteen board members are IBE? What is IBE?
A Privy Council of String Pullers
Idaho Business for Education (IBE) is a privately funded non-profit that claims to concern itself with “education”, but in reality, it is the star chamber of Boise’s shadow government and it exerts enormous influence over both education and healthcare policy. IBE is the privy council of Idaho’s “Deep State”, and the two fields it focuses most of its effort on, —education and healthcare, —consume about 70% of Idaho’s $13 billion-dollar annual budget.
NISGR first encountered IBE while researching the Idaho State Board of Education and its relationship to the NIC Foundation (see “Frie nds of NIC” Plan to Dismantle the College). We could not fail to notice that many ISBE board members were also board members of IBE, and that when ISBE trustees’ terms were up, they were usually replaced by like-minded associates with either direct or indirect connections to IBE. This is what a shadow government looks like.
In addition to dominating ISBE, there appear to be IBE board members involved with many other influential organizations in Boise, including IACI, IAGC, IHFA, and IDACORP, as well as St. Luke. So, while IBE claims that is mission is to produce “graduates with credentials“, in reality it is a powerful directorate that exerts influence over many government agencies.
When trying to understand how IBE exerts “behind the scenes” influence, it is important to focus on institutions as well as people. Although some IBE board members are well-known luminaries, the influence of others is derived mainly from their executive office. Corporations, as well as individuals, can be “trustees” of IBE, and the board of directors consists mainly of wealthy investors, corporate titans, and large land-owners who sit on governing boards of powerful foundations, colleges, and hospitals.
To give a visual representation of the institutions behind IBE we’ve attached a color-coded list of the professional and civic associations of current board members. Green represents Banks and Private equity firms; Red indicates Education Trustees; Blue: Healthcare; Brown: Developers, Land Owners, Natural Resources; and Purple: Government, Law & Non-Profits.
So what does all of this have to do with St. Luke? Quite a lot. Among prominent IBE board members are a half dozen St. Luke trustees, including both current and former St. Luke CEOs. The founders of IBE, Doug and Skip Oppenheimer, are both long time board members of St. Luke, and the current chair of the St. Luke Board, Andrew Scoggin, is also a former ISBE trustee. It’s a BIG CLUB, but a Small World!!!
And just in case St. Luke’s influence over healthcare providers in Southern Idaho is not sufficiently monopolistic, the IBE board also includes the CEOs of St. Alphonsus and East Idaho Regional Medical Center, the only major hospitals in South Idaho outside the St. Luke network. And of course, that is because they are already aligned with other national hospital networks. In other words, all the hospitals in Southern Idaho are now run by private healthcare corporations. None are accountable to the public, but all are accountable to IBE.
What a marvelous way of bringing the executive powers of Idaho’s entire medical establishment under the benevolent supervision of the wealthiest network of money-mongers and power-brokers in the state.
St. Alphonsus is part of Trinity Health, a nationwide Catholic healthcare system. Both West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, and East Idaho Regional MC in Idaho Falls, are run by HCA, a national, for-profit network of hospitals.
Globalists are Running the Show
What does all this mean? First of all, it means that the consolidation of health care facilities is occurring nation-wide, and almost all Idaho Medical Centers are already under the control of either the St. Luke “Health System” in the south, or Kootenai Health in the North. And as regional hospitals fall under the control of large corporations, critical decisions about healthcare services are made by fewer and fewer people.
Second, it means that consolidation of healthcare facilities is an end in itself. It doesn’t matter if it makes economic sense, or if it improves healthcare outcomes, or if it is pleasing to either patients or health care providers. The explicit goal is a centrally controlled, one-size-fits all health care system, run by a small group of hand-picked insiders. The people at the top of the healthcare pyramid are globalists, monopoly capitalists, and central planners. And their object is always to consolidate control, and limit freedom.
As NISGR’s previous article on Kootenai Health, and Crony-capitalists made clear, the entire field of healthcare is deeply corrupt, and consolidation and uniformity is exactly the wrong direction. Idaho residents who value medical freedom should seek the help of naturopaths and alternative medical providers and as much as possible, avoid dealing with corporate healthcare altogether.
If there was any doubt how corrupt our healthcare systems were before COVID, the tyrannical behavior of public health agencies and medical administrators during the crisis have left no doubt.
Although there are still many good healthcare providers in the system, and some truly remarkable technology and therapies, at the highest level of control, Idaho’s healthcare systems are squarely in the hands of globalist plutocrats. Be aware.
To continue with part II of this series, see: North Idaho’s Healthcare Kraken
From nislowgrow.org