Dangerous Caregivers Not on List

A federal database fully available to hospitals March 1 is missing disciplinary records from states.

About 23 or 24 years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter, I covered the prosecution of a psychiatrist who drugged and raped six male criminal defendants who were entrusted to him by the presiding judge of the Superior Court.

He was a highly respected community member, and when I first heard the accusations, I scoffed. I thought that the prisoners and habitual criminals were trying to besmirch a fine man.

But prosecutor Tom Lannen, bless his soul, hewed to his duty despite community antagonism toward his (criminal) witnesses, and in the end it was clear that the doctor was guilty as charged. The jury found him guilty.

This was not the biggest shock. The most shocking revelations came in a thick presentencing report from the probation officer, reporting that the doctor had been accused and then released in his native Kentucky, Montana, California and Hawaii in turn before he arrived in our community. He was involved in a homosexual slave ring. He was profoundly evil. In each state, he surrendered his state medical license in return for the government dropping or preventing criminal charges against him. Then he packed up and moved on to the next opportunity.

I remember writing a sidebar on national developments to make physician discipline more transparent, so that employers and patients could take reasonable precautions to avoid hiring depraved or incompetent medical professionals. Soon, we were assured, it wouldn't be possible to scam the system like our court-appointed psychiatrist had.

Stories like this Los Angeles Times investigatory piece, on a compromised federal database of physician discipline actions, don't inspire confidence that much has changed during the intervening generation. In this case, it's the diligence of the government to oversee physician discipline that's in question. But neither have doctors themselves made significant progress toward holding their colleagues accountable.

This is yet another contraindication of "tort reform," which immunizes the medical profession from large judgments in civil trials. If incompetent or lawless doctors can prevent peers, regulators and the judiciary system from holding them accountable, what remains for the doctors' victims but a stark choice between "self-help" and acquiescence?

When Caregivers Stray: Times/ProPublica Investigation
By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

More than two decades ago, Congress set out to stop dangerous or incompetent caregivers from crossing state lines and landing in trouble again.

It ordered up a national database allowing hospitals to check for disciplinary actions taken anywhere in the country against nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and other licensed health professionals.

On March 1 -- 22 years later -- the federal government finally plans to let hospitals use it. But the long-awaited repository is missing serious disciplinary actions against what are probably thousands of health providers, according to an investigation by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times.

Some of the missing cases involve providers who have harmed patients -- a nurse, for instance, whose license was pulled after she injected a patient with painkillers in a drugstore parking lot and improperly prescribed methadone to an addict who later died of an overdose.

The omissions took federal health officials by surprise. Only last month, a spokesman for the agency that oversees the database told reporters that "no data is missing." Another official said the agency had been "constantly" checking its data against state licensing board websites.

But Friday, the head of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) acknowledged that records were missing. She said her agency had launched a "full and complete" review to determine what is wrong and how to fix it.

"We take this very seriously," administrator Mary Wakefield said.

The new information will still go online as planned -- but with a warning that it is incomplete, she said.

Wakefield and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter Friday to the nation's governors asking for their immediate help fixing gaps in the database. It was a matter of "protecting the safety of patients across this country," they wrote.

This summer, the letter said, the federal government will begin publicly listing any state agencies that do not report properly. Wakefield's agency also plans to hold training sessions for state officials and conduct audits to help ensure compliance.

The government for two decades has kept a database of disciplinary actions against doctors and dentists. In 1999, state boards were required to begin filing reports on all other health professionals whose licenses were revoked or restricted.

Yet many states have filed sporadically, if at all. They've faced no penalties.

Reporters compared the total number of disciplinary actions that various states reported to the federal government -- detailed on the HRSA website -- to the states' own records, some of which were posted online. The discrepancies were glaring.

The federal government's site does not include a single report of discipline against any of the thousands of psychiatric technicians or occupational therapists in California.

Yet the website for the California board overseeing psychiatric technicians cites 84 who received severe sanctions in the last two years alone. Among them are two who surrendered their licenses after failing to help a woman who was choking to death on a paper towel and a third convicted of possessing child pornography.

Similarly, the occupational therapy board lists 40 disciplinary actions over five years.

Leaders of both state boards acknowledged that they hadn't been reporting disciplinary cases to the federal government but said they intended to do so in the future.

Judging from the federal numbers, no pharmacist has been disciplined in South Dakota or New Hampshire, and only one each in Alabama, Delaware, Ohio and Tennessee. But a search of those states' websites showed hundreds of sanctions.

Reporters found at least nine states that appear to have submitted incomplete records on registered nurses.

Indiana didn't report hundreds of disciplinary actions in 2004 and 2005 -- including the nearly 100 nurses who were indefinitely barred from caring for patients. In one case, a nurse had put a knife to a co-worker's throat.

It's difficult to quantify how much data is missing. In each state, multiple boards oversee various health practitioners. Each has different rules and methods for meting out discipline. Some don't make the information public, and others said they didn't know the number of actions they'd taken.

Troubled professionals can have licenses in multiple states, so checking with just one state's board might not turn up disciplinary actions elsewhere. Moreover, state regulators can be slow to share information with one another, and some professionals hide past sanctions.

Several directors of state licensing agencies said they had assumed that their cases were being reported to the federal government.

Sean Gorman, the director of Indiana's nursing board, learned from reporters that hundreds of his state's actions against nurses had not been. That prompted Indiana to audit compliance by all of the state's health boards.

In Ohio, William T. Winsley, executive director of the pharmacy board, said he had no idea that only one of his state's pharmacist cases had been reported. At his board's November 2009 meeting alone, it pulled the licenses of five, including one who ran an Internet pill mill that dispensed nearly 1.5 million drug doses without valid prescriptions.

The database has had a long and fitful history.

In 1986, amid concerns that doctors were racking up malpractice accusations and then moving freely to other states, Congress called for a central repository of disciplinary actions against them. The next year, lawmakers expanded the requirement to include all healthcare workers.

The idea was to create a one-stop clearinghouse that hospitals and other eligible employers could check. The National Practitioner Data Bank was up and running quickly on doctors and dentists, but a series of logistical, technological and financial hurdles delayed its expansion. Some 280,000 nurses and other practitioners are to be added March 1.

Federal officials predict that the new information will be searched more than 123,000 times annually by health employers and others. The database is not open to the public.

Hospital industry officials said they welcomed the database but emphasized that it's just one tool for screening potential hires, along with criminal checks, drug tests and reference calls.

With an incomplete database, however, employers could be given "a false sense of security that somebody who may be really dangerous isn't, because their name isn't there," said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group.

The federal government has had plenty of time to make it right, said Wolfe, whose Washington-based group advocates for patient safety. "It's really just embarrassing."

tracy.weber@ propublica.org

charles.ornstein@ propublica.org

Ornstein and Weber are senior reporters at ProPublica in New York. Their previous stories about gaps in nursing oversight can be found at latimes.com/nurses and propublica.org/nurses.

Don't Mess With Texas Doctors: Veteran Nurse Fired, Prosecuted for Reporting Alleged Surgeon Misconduct to Regulators

The State of Texas has brought criminal charges against a nurse who reported a surgeon's alleged misconduct to state regulators, according to this New York Times article. Win or lose, the prosecution will almost certainly chill the enthusiasm of any Texas abortion clinic personnel who are tempted to claim the $10,000 reward recently offered by Operation Rescue.

NEW YORK TIMES
Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor
By KEVIN SACK

KERMIT, Tex. — It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

When she was fingerprinted and photographed at the jail here last June, it felt as if she had entered a parallel universe, albeit one situated in this barren scrap of West Texas oil patch.

“It was surreal,” said Mrs. Mitchell, 52, the wife of an oil field mechanic and mother of a teenage son. “I said how can this be? You can’t go to prison for doing the right thing.”

But in what may be an unprecedented prosecution, Mrs. Mitchell is scheduled to stand trial in state court on Monday for “misuse of official information,” a third-degree felony in Texas.

The prosecutor said he would show that Mrs. Mitchell had a history of making “inflammatory” statements about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. and intended to damage his reputation when she reported him last April to the Texas Medical Board, which licenses and disciplines doctors.

Mrs. Mitchell counters that as an administrative nurse, she had a professional obligation to protect patients from what she saw as a pattern of improper prescribing and surgical procedures — including a failed skin graft that Dr. Arafiles performed in the emergency room, without surgical privileges. He also sutured a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger for protection, an unconventional remedy that was later flagged as inappropriate by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Charges against a second nurse, Vickilyn Galle, who helped Mrs. Mitchell write the letter, were dismissed at the prosecutor’s discretion last week.

The case has been infused with the small-town politics of this wind-whipped city of 5,200 in the heart of the Permian Basin, 10 miles from the New Mexico border. The seeming conflicts of interest are as abundant as the cattle grazing among the pump jacks and mesquite.

When the medical board notified Dr. Arafiles of the anonymous complaint, he protested to his friend, the Winkler County sheriff, that he was being harassed. The sheriff, an admiring patient who credits the doctor with saving him after a heart attack, obtained a search warrant to seize the two nurses’ work computers and found the letter.

Both sides acknowledge that the case has polarized the community, and the judge has moved the trial to a neighboring county.

The state and national nurses associations have called the prosecution an outrage and raised $40,000 for the defense. Legal experts argue that in a civil context, Mrs. Mitchell would seem to be protected by Texas whistle-blower laws.

“To me, this is completely over the top,” said Louis A. Clark, president of the Government Accountability Project, a group that promotes the defense of whistle-blowers. “It seems really, really unique.”

Until they were fired without explanation on June 1, Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Galle had worked a combined 47 years at Winkler County Memorial Hospital here, most recently as its compliance and quality improvement officers.

The nurses, who are highly regarded even by the administrator who dismissed them, said the case had stained their reputations and drained their savings. With felony charges pending, neither has been able to find work. They said they could feel heads turn when they walked into local lunch spots like El Joey’s Mexican restaurant.

“It has derailed our careers, and we’re probably not going to be able to get them back on track again,” said Mrs. Galle, 54, a grandmother who is depicted around town as the soft-spoken Thelma to Mrs. Mitchell’s straight-shooting Louise. “We’re just in disbelief that you could be arrested for doing something you had been told your whole career was an obligation.”

It was not long after the public hospital hired Dr. Arafiles in 2008 that the nurses said they began to worry. They sounded internal alarms but felt they were not being heeded by administrators.

Frustrated and fearing for patients, they directed the medical board to six cases “of concern” that were identified by file numbers but not by patient names. The letter also mentioned that Dr. Arafiles was sending e-mail messages to patients about an herbal supplement he sold on the side.

Mrs. Mitchell typed the letter and mailed it with a separate complaint signed by a third nurse, who wrote that she had resigned because of similar concerns about Dr. Arafiles. That nurse was not charged.

To convict Mrs. Mitchell, the prosecution must prove that she used her position to disseminate confidential information for a “nongovernmental purpose” with intent to harm Dr. Arafiles.

Mari E. Robinson, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, has warned in a blistering letter to prosecutors that the case will have “a significant chilling effect” on the reporting of malpractice.

The nurses’ lawyers, John H. Cook IV and Brian Carney, have filed a civil lawsuit in federal court charging the county, hospital, sheriff, doctor and prosecutor with vindictive prosecution and denial of the nurses’ First Amendment rights.

Nonetheless, the sheriff, Robert L. Roberts Jr., and the prosecutor, Scott M. Tidwell, express confidence in their case.

“The only side of the story that the town has heard is that these are sisters of mercy, missionaries of peace,” said Mr. Tidwell, who is trying the case because the district attorney is in poor health. “The town has not heard the whole story.”

Dr. Arafiles, 47, who attended medical school in his native Philippines and trained in Baltimore and Buffalo, said his lawyer had advised him not to talk. “I’ve been brutalized and abused,” he said. “I’m the victim in this case, and that is all I can say.”

Several Texas laws would seem to enshrine a nurse’s right, and perhaps duty, to report a physician when he or she believes that patients are at risk. Lawyers on both sides agree that the case will hinge on whether a jury believes that Mrs. Mitchell reported in good faith. In civil whistle-blower cases, the Supreme Court of Texas has held that good faith requires only a reasonable belief that the conduct being reported is illegal.

The hospital administrator, Stan Wiley, said in an interview that Dr. Arafiles had been reprimanded on several occasions for improprieties in writing prescriptions and performing surgery and had agreed to make changes. Mr. Wiley, who said it was difficult to recruit physicians to remote West Texas, said he knew when he hired Dr. Arafiles that he had a restriction on his license stemming from his supervision of a weight-loss clinic.

In a surprise inspection last September, state investigators found several violations by Dr. Arafiles and concluded that the hospital had discriminated against the nurses by firing them for “reporting in good faith.”

But Sheriff Roberts, who has held the post for 18 years, said the state would show that the complaint had been filed in vengeance. “If it’s made to destroy somebody’s reputation or forcing them to leave town,” he said, “then I don’t believe it is good faith.”

Sheriff Roberts called Dr. Arafiles “the most sincerely caring person I have ever met.”

Mr. Wiley said he believed that the nurses had acted in bad faith because they went to the state despite his internal efforts to discipline Dr. Arafiles. But, he said, “I don’t believe they did it on a personal vendetta.”

Mrs. Mitchell said all she saw at the hospital was delay.

“The medical staff needed to make a decision on him,” she said. “You don’t get a second chance to save somebody’s life.”

State Supreme Court Strikes Down Legislated Limits on Jury Awards

So-called "tort reform" has discouraged the plaintiffs' bar from serving victims of medical malpractice, including abundant abortion malpractice. In Nevada, for example, a ballot initiative enacted a statute that limits attorney contingency fees to 15% of any recovery. This is well below the break-even threshold, and many - perhaps most - medical malpractice plaintiffs' attorneys simply got out of the business.

The Illinois Supreme Court decision last week may change the calculus in Illinois, but the national trend is to constrict the options of abortion malpractice victims and other medical malpractice victims to seek recourse in the courts.

When the malpractice is egregious enough, California juries aren't reluctant to award significant damages, notwithstanding all the California tort reform measures that have passed. Last week, a Riverside County jury awarded $16.5 million to a paraplegic who lost spinal function due to a neurosurgeon's neglect. (The doctor has since moved to Florida to practice medicine there.)

It wouldn't take very many of these awards for abortion-linked breast cancer to prompt insurers to insist that their abortionist policy holders make full disclosure of abortion risks to patients.

ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN MEDICAL MALPRACTICE LAW
Court says limiting damages violates separation-of-powers clause by allowing lawmakers to interfere with a jury's right to determine damages
By Bruce Japsen and Ameet Sachdev, Chicago Tribune

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state's medical malpractice law Thursday, saying limits on damages awarded to victims of medical negligence are unconstitutional.

The much-anticipated ruling deals a blow to doctors and hospital officials who say caps on damages are a way to tame rising health care costs.

State lawmakers in 2005 passed legislation, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, that established limits on pain and suffering and other non-economic damages of $500,000 in cases against doctors and $1 million against hospitals. Illinois followed other states, such as California, that capped damages years ago.

The court said the law violates the state's separation-of-powers clause between the branches of government by allowing lawmakers to interfere with a jury's right to determine damages. "The crux of our analysis is whether the statute unduly infringes upon the inherent power of the judiciary," the majority opinion said.

Justices also said they were not persuaded by arguments used in other states. "That 'everybody is doing it,' is hardly a litmus test for the constitutionality of the statute," wrote Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald in delivering the opinion for four siding in the majority of the seven-member court.

Justices Lloyd Karmeier and Rita Garman dissented on certain key points of the decision and expressed sympathy to providers of medical care, citing President Barack Obama's recent address to a joint session of Congress that they said admonished the nation's collective failure to enact health care reform.

But limiting medical liability is no silver bullet for controlling health costs. The Congressional Budget Office reported in September that reforms, such as capping non-economic damages, would lower the nation's health care bill by only 0.5 percent.

The majority said the court's decision was not made with Washington's health care reform efforts in mind.

Still, the ruling could figure in the national debate of stalled health care legislation. Though Obama and Democrats have said they are unlikely to cap damages in federal health care legislation, they have been open to a compromise on liability reform.

The Obama administration, Republicans and doctor groups have made attempts to scale back the practice of "defensive medicine," in which doctors perform medical procedures that are not necessary because of legal concerns. The CBO said recent studies have shown that liability reforms can slightly reduce the use of health care.


Thursday's decision will not end the heated debate over whether lawsuits affect the quality and costs of medical care.

One area where there is agreement is on establishing evidence-based medicine, which offers guidelines for doctors to follow when treating patients.

"The high cost of potential damages impacts how insurers rate different types of practices," said Larry Boress, chief executive of Midwest Business Group on Health, a coalition that represents some of the region's largest employers. "While we encourage physicians to practice evidence-based medicine to ensure high quality medical care is provided, we know that not all of medicine has evidence-based guidelines. Our state and nation need alternative methods of addressing malpractice allegations."

The state law came after more than two years of political battle in Springfield between trial lawyers and providers of medical care and their insurers. Doctors blamed the lack of malpractice reform for an exodus of physicians from the state, particularly neurosurgeons and obstetricians, who typically have higher insurance premiums.

But government studies have found little evidence that rising malpractice premiums have forced doctors to retire early or move to another state.

Thursday's high court decision upset physicians, who say a return to high premiums and a loss of physicians are likely.

"Today's court decision threatens to undo all that Illinois patients and physicians have gained under the cap, including greater access to health care, lower medical liability rates and increased competition among medical liability insurers," said James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association.

Rohack said patient access to medical care worsened in Illinois after the court overruled the state's previous cap on non-economic damages in 1997.

"Severe problems with patient access to care emerged as the unrestrained excesses of the state's legal system forced Illinois physicians to limit services, retire early or move to other states where liability premiums were more stable," Rohack said. "Without a cap on non-economic damages from 1997 to 2005, Chicago physicians saw their liability premiums increase an average of 10 to 12 percent each year."

When the cap was reinstated in 2005, Rohack said, premiums for Chicago physicians stabilized and even began to shrink.


In 2008, the total volume of malpractice premiums written in Illinois was $600 million, according to the state insurance division. That was down 10 percent from 2006.

But consumer groups and insurance industry officials say the fact that rates have stabilized has nothing to do with the caps. It has more to do with insurance market cycles and other factors, such as increased competition and new insurance regulations that were included in the cap legislation, they said.

As a result of the new regulations, the state's largest medical malpractice insurer, ISMIE Mutual Insurance Co., was subject to hearings regarding a proposed rate increase in 2005. The insurance division ordered ISMIE to return excess premiums to doctors and set a target rate reduction of 3.5 percent.

"Illinois rates have followed national trends," said Bill Yurek, president of Chicago-based Avreco, a wholesale insurance broker. "I don't think the caps really did much."

Removing the caps, though, could potentially increase the cost of claims, said Jeff Weigel, chief underwriting officer at Medicus Insurance Co. of Austin, Texas, which started underwriting insurance in Illinois in 2007. He also said he believes insurance rates would have come down if the caps had been upheld. Despite the court's ruling, Medicus plans to stay in Illinois, Weigel said.

Twice before, Illinois lawmakers have adopted caps, and both times the state's highest court nixed them.

The latest case before the high court comes on appeal from Cook County Circuit Court. In 2007, Circuit Judge Diane Larsen decided that caps on malpractice awards violated the Illinois Constitution's "separation of powers" clause, in effect ruling that the state Legislature can't interfere with the right of juries and judges to determine fair damages. Larsen's ruling falls in line with a 1997 Illinois Supreme Court decision that overturned a 1995 law implementing caps on personal-injury cases.

The first case to test the 2005 law was that of 4-year-old Abigaile LeBron, who suffered a severe brain injury during her birth at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park. In a lawsuit filed in 2006, her family charged the hospital, her doctor and nurse with negligence.

Her lawyer, Jeff Goldberg, and members of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association praised the court for lifting arbitrary limits on damages.

"We can now focus on the real issue — providing meaningful insurance reform that will keep costs down for doctors and patients alike," said Peter Flowers, president of the lawyer group.

Damage caps hurt the most serious cases of medical negligence, said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of "The Medical Malpractice Myth." Personal injury lawyers are less likely to take cases from lower-earning people because the potential recovery is smaller when damages are limited to economic losses.

"Caps don't solve the problems of the medical liability system," Baker said. "Doctors still have tremendous distrust of the system. And people that are the most deserving don't get the money."

Nonprofit Planned Parenthood Pays Its California Executives Generously, But Turns Women Away Due to Budget Crunch

The individual solo abortionist is often underinsured or even uninsured, but the corporate Planned Parenthood abortion empire in California appears to be flush. The salaries paid at nine California affiliates of Planned Parenthood suggest deep pockets if an abortion negligence or battery case ever gets to a California civil jury.

CALIFORNIA CATHOLIC DAILY

How much do you make?
California’s Planned Parenthood affiliates pay executives top dollar, with generous benefit packages

(Editor’s note: This is the first in an ongoing series about the finances of the nine Planned Parenthood affiliates in California. Unless otherwise noted, the information comes from IRS Form 990, an annual report required by the IRS for tax-exempt non-profits. Check back each week for a new installment in the series.)

Planned Parenthood affiliates in California pay their top executives well and provide many of them with generous benefit packages, even though Planned Parenthood has pleaded with the state legislature in recent years that it was turning away as many as 10,000 patients a month for lack of sufficient funding.

Here is a list of the compensation paid to the five top Planned Parenthood executives at each California affiliate, from highest paid to lowest paid. Unless otherwise noted, the information comes from Form 990s for 2007 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008.

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, San Jose

Linda Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer
Salary: $294,091
Benefits: $31,391
Total Compensation: $325,482

D. Ferguson, Medical Director
Salary: $214,498
Benefits: $18,589
Total Compensation: $233,087

A. Cabebe, Family Practice
Salary: $186,624
Benefits: $19,061
Total Compensation: $205,685

J. Gambruno, Chief Financial Officer, Vice-president of Finance and Administration
Salary: $182,875
Benefits: $22,494
Total Compensation: $205,369

E. Love, Vice-president People Support and Development
Salary: $156,882
Benefits: $23,552
Total Compensation: $180,434

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: 162

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, San Francisco
(Note: Planned Parenthood Golden Gate executives enjoy a 35-hour work week.)

Dian Harrison, President and Chief Executive Officer
Salary: $274,438
Benefits: $18,976
Expense Account: $11,340
Total Compensation: $304,754

Johnetta Stevens, Chief Development Officer
Salary: $174,182
Benefits: $40,064
Total Compensation: $214,256

Jennifer Winter, Vice-president, Medical Services
Salary: $164,000
Benefits: $37,720
Total Compensation: $201,720

Therese Wilson, Executive Vice-president
Salary: $163,490
Benefits: $37,602
Total Compensation: $201,092

T. Marx, Chief Financial Officer
Salary: $134,534
Benefits: $41,590
Total Compensation: $176,124

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: 69

Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties

John A. Dunn, President and Chief Executive Officer
Salary: $270,019
Benefits: $21,185
Total Compensation: $291,204

Nancy Dudley, Senior Vice-president for Strategic Development
Salary: $151,518
Benefits: $11,178
Total Compensation: $162,696

Stephanie Kight, Senior Vice-president for Community Affairs
Salary: $129,908
Benefits: $11,613
Total Compensation: $141,521

Scott M. Marshall, Senior Vice-president
Salary: $111,885
Benefits: $10,448
Total Compensation: $122,333

Christine J. Chai, Vice-President for Clinical Practice and Medial Director
(*Note: Christine Chai works 20 hours per week for Planned Parenthood.)
Salary: $99,922
Benefits: $7,973
Total Compensation: $107,895

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: 61

Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties
(Calendar year ending Dec. 31, 2007)

Darrah Johnson, Chief Executive Officer
Salary: $253,269
Benefits: $14,467
Total Compensation: $267,736

Nancy Sasaki, Executive Vice President
Salary: $171,037
Benefits: $10,077
Total Compensation: $181,114

Angela Reed, Senior Vice-president
Salary: $154,385
Benefits: $8779
Total Compensation: $163,164

Leonard Dodson, Chief Financial Officer
Salary: $157,307
Benefits: $398
Total Compensation: $157,705

Katherine Sheehan, Medical Director
Salary: $131,906
Benefits: $4715
Total Compensation: $136,621

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: 89

Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles

Mary Jane Wagle, President and Chief Executive Officer
Salary: $225,692
Benefits: $63
Total Compensation: $225,755

Bobby Lee, President, Board of Directors
Salary: $156,184
Benefits: $4,749
Total Compensation: $160,933

Benjamin Tysch, Chief Administrative Officer
Salary: $149,423
Benefits: $2,838
Total Compensation: $152,261

Sally Blowitz, Vice-president for Development
Salary: $137,741
Benefits: $3,320
Total Compensation: $141,061

Adrianne Black, Vice-president for Client Services
Salary: $128,261
Benefits: $10,675
Total Compensation: $138,936

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: 67

Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties
(No benefit amounts were listed on this affiliate’s Form 990.)

Cheryl Rollings, President and Chief Executive Officer
Salary: $189,805

Laura Ferris (no title)
Salary: $124,717

Christine Lyon, Vice-president for Public Affairs
Salary: $114,500

Patricia Fajardo, Vice-president for Clinical Services
Salary: $105,568

Kelly Genovese, Clinician
Salary: $99,614

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: 1

Planned Parenthood of Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley

Sherri Bonner, President and Chief Executive Officer
Salary: $139,970
Benefits: $21,600
Expense Account: $6,000
Total Compensation: $167,570

Anna Rutherford, Lead Clinician
Salary: $112,538
Benefits: $8,867
Total Compensation: $121,405

Henrietta Crite-Wilson, Clinician
Salary: $96,090
Benefits: $8,188
Total Compensation: $104,278

Buff Megaw, Director of Development
Salary: $86,726
Benefits: $7,537
Total Compensation: $94,263

Michelle Matyi, Vice-president for Patient Services
Salary: $72,961
Benefits: $6,962
Total Compensation: $79,923

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: 3

Planned Parenthood Six Rivers, Eureka
(Information for this report was not available from an IRS Form 990. It was instead collected from the website Charity Navigator, the “largest and most utilized evaluator of charities.” The data comes from Planned Parenthood Six Rivers’ 2007-2008 annual report, according to Charity Navigator. No benefits information was provided. Six Rivers is the smallest of California’s nine Planned Parenthood affiliates.)

K. Albright, Lead Clinician -- $70,734
D. Hatch, Clinician -- $64,153
M. Amir, Clinician -- $58,083
Denise Vanden Bos, Chief Executive Officer -- $55,740

Total number of other employees earning more than $50,000 per year: Not available

© California Catholic Daily 2010.

Outside Its Capitol District, the Mexican Political Landscape is Generally Prolife

Over half Mexico's 32 states have enacted Constitutional amendments declaring that life begins at conception since an August 2008 pro-abortion decision by the Mexican Supreme Court, according to this Chicago Tribune article.

The grassroots are so pervasively prolife that even the secular, anticlerical Partido Revolucionario Institucional(PRI), historically antagonistic toward the Catholic Church, has supported the prolife state Constitutional amendments.

Certain U.S. Supreme Court Justices have cited "emerging" foreign legal trends to justify recent decisions, including one that overturned restrictions on homosexual conduct, but I would not expect that they'll find the emerging Mexican trend nearly as seductive.

Mexican States Adopt Abortion Restrictions In Response To Legalization Of Procedure In Mexico City

In response to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in August 2008 upholding a Mexico City law permitting abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, 17 of 32 Mexican states have approved amendments to their constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and granting legal rights to fetuses, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Veracruz, which in November 2009 became the most recent state to enact an antiabortion-rights amendment, has called on the federal government to consider adding a similar amendment to the national constitution.

Many of the new laws contain exceptions allowing abortion in cases of rape or if the woman's life is in danger, and they allow judges to send women for counseling instead of jail if they are convicted of having an abortion.

Maria Luisa Sanchez, director of GIRE, a Mexican abortion-rights group, said that the measures effectively "treat women as if they are criminals," adding that abortion is "going to be more clandestine than before." Abortion-rights groups have filed legal actions in state courts to thwart the enforcement of the laws.

Abortion-rights opponents say the spate of amendments reflect a popular backlash against the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling. The Roman Catholic Church, the National Action Party of President Felipe Calderon and the center-left Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, back the amendments.

Observers say that the PRI - which lost the presidency in 2000 and has long favored women's rights and a strong separation of church and state - made a political decision to support the amendments with an eye to elections in 12 Mexican states in 2010.

According to Daniel Lund, a pollster and analyst based in Mexico City, the PRI has shifted to a more conservative stance on abortion to head off conservative rivals as state elections approach. PRI's new position has drawn anger from abortion-rights advocates who say party leaders have traded principles for a possible advantage in the next election.

Tiller's Killer Argues Necessity Defense

The first-degree murder trial of Scott Roeder for killing late-term abortionist George Tiller may yield the most robust abortion opponent's criminal defense in decades.

Almost since Roe v. Wade, these cases have ended either in a negotiated guilty plea or in a show trial, in which the judge rammed the conviction through. Even in nonviolent trespassing cases, American courts have refused to permit the accused to raise the "necessity" defense, which is routinely permitted in other criminal prosecutions.

Kansas District Judge Warren Wilbert, no friend to abortion activists in previous litigation, startled onlookers when he veered from the customary script and refused to prohibit defense attorneys from arguing that Roeder was over-charged (that the charge should have been voluntary manslaughter instead of first-degree murder), based on Roeder's perception of the necessity of killing Tiller to prevent the killing of innocent third parties (unborn children).

If defendants accused of violence against abortionists are permitted to defend themselves as vigorously as other criminal defendants, it could affect climate change in the abortion industry. Convicted assailants might not necessarily be signing on for lethal injection or life in prison, and there might be an occasional not guilty verdict.

One of the attractive features of an abortion practice is the ability to have a life away from the clinic. Nobody will call the abortionist out of his daughter's birthday party for an emergency, and his pager will not go off during his parents' 50th wedding anniversary banquet. He can be active in his Lutheran Church, as Tiller was, or in his Jewish Congregation, as New York abortionist Bart Slepian was. He can schedule a golf day, or an annual fishing trip, with autonomy. A perception of increased physical danger, however, may offset the allure of these perks of the abortionist lifestyle.

Abortion industry shareholders are therefore concerned that even-handed criminal procedure may indirectly drop the water table for providers, such that only the most deeply-rooted, ideologically-committed abortionists would stay in the business. Most agree that pro-abortion true believers make up a small fraction of the total abortion provider cadre. For broad availability, the industry will need the services of a large pool of uncommitted, opportunistic providers, at least until and unless Speaker Pelosi and President Obama are able to deliver more coercive measures to forcibly recruit collaborators to the business.

Judge's Background Under Scrutiny in Trial of Man Accused of Murdering U.S. Abortion Doctor
Canadian Press Newswire

WICHITA, Kan. - The judge overseeing the trial of the man accused of gunning down a Kansas abortion doctor is a practicing Roman Catholic who once courted the endorsement of an anti-abortion group - but who has insisted the case won't be about abortion. State District Judge Warren Wilbert galvanized both sides in the U.S. abortion debate this week when he refused on the eve of Scott Roeder's murder trial to block the defence from trying to build a voluntary-manslaughter case by arguing that Roeder believed the killing of Dr. George Tiller was necessary to save unborn children. Legal experts said the judge's decision was a proper attempt to protect the defendant's rights. But the move has put Wilbert and his background under the microscope heading into one of the most sensational abortion-related cases in the U.S.

"All high-profile trials put a lot of pressure on judges because even though our courtrooms are open, generally speaking, the public doesn't have an eye on judges unless election time comes around," said Michael Kaye, director of Washburn University's Center for Excellence in Advocacy in Topeka. "So a judge in this position, any judge knowing this, is going to try to do his best to appear judicious and to rule in a way that will not get him reversed."

Wilbert, 57, is considered by many in the local legal community to be a fair judge. No one can seem to point to an instance in which he injected his religious beliefs into a case.

He is a rather low-key figure on the bench. He runs a tight courtroom, isn't given to colorful exchanges and has little tolerance for distraction. The Roeder trial _ which began with jury selection Wednesday _ is easily the biggest case to come before him.

Tiller, one of the few late-term abortion providers in the U.S., was shot to death inside his Lutheran church in Wichita last May.

In televised hearings, Wilbert has been scrupulous about keeping private his own beliefs on abortion, exhaustively citing case law when making any rulings. He angered news outlets when he closed jury selection to the media, saying the presence of reporters could inhibit prospective jurors from speaking frankly about abortion.

He has insisted the trial will not turn into a debate over abortion, warning Roeder's lawyers that he intends to keep the case as a "criminal, first-degree murder trial."

Wilbert, a Republican who earned his bachelor's and law degrees from Washburn University in Topeka, was appointed to the bench in 1995 and faced no opposition the first three times he stood election. The most recent race was a different story: Wilbert won re-election in 2008 by a mere 471 votes out of nearly 166,000 cast.

Kansans for Life's political action committee endorsed Wilbert in that race, though it did not contribute to his campaign directly. The mainstream anti-abortion group does not espouse violence, and its political arm focuses on lobbying the state Legislature.

Finance records show that Wilbert paid the group $75 in September 2008 to have his name listed in an ad in its quarterly newsletter, a 24-page booklet that included articles such as "Update on Tiller charges" and "Planned Parenthood - a Snake in the Grass!" Planned Parenthood is a leading abortion provider. The judge also spent more than $16,000 on radio spots on seven stations.

The ad in the newsletter took up most of the bottom of page 16. It said: "The Kansans for Life PAC urges you to vote for, work for and pray for the following pro-life candidates."

David Gittrich, the organization's state development director, said the group endorsed Wilbert because it believed he was no judicial activist and would not try to make new law from the bench. "The No. 1 thing is, is this a good judge?" Gittrich said.

In an election guide published by The Wichita Eagle, Wilbert described himself as a member of Wichita's St. Thomas Aquinas Church, where the married father of two was a lay minister and former president of the school board. Among Catholicism's core doctrines is a strict stand against abortion.

Beyond the ad, campaign-watchers said they could not recall anything he might have said about his position on abortion during his re-election bid.

In an email to The Associated Press, Wilbert turned down an interview request for this story, saying he could not comment because of the trial.

The judge has dealt with cases involving abortion before. Court records show a 2005 case in which he dismissed a public records lawsuit filed by Cheryl Sullenger, the senior policy adviser for anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, after she was denied copies of tapes of calls to the emergency dispatcher for ambulance runs from Tiller's clinic. Though the judge ruled against her, Sullenger said she believes Wilbert will "do his job" in the latest case. "Most everybody in the world is looking at him - he is not going to pull monkey business," Sullenger said. "I don't think he wants to be known as the judge who blew the biggest case he's ever had."

Though he advertised with Kansas for Life, campaign finance records show that Wilbert also received a $500 contribution in June 2008 from Dan Monnat, one of Tiller's lawyers. Two months before his slaying, Tiller was acquitted of misdemeanour charges he failed to get an independent second opinion for some late-term abortions as required under state law. Wilbert and Monnat had worked together before, when Wilbert faced his own legal problems. A judicial commission reprimanded him in 2006 for a personal relationship with a subordinate employee - conduct Wilbert later explained to the Wichita Bar Association consisted of riding motorcycles with courthouse employees after work. "I donated to his campaign because I thought he was a good judge and would continue to be a good judge," Monnat said.

Washburn University's Kaye dismissed as "hyperbole" warnings that allowing Roeder to build a manslaughter case will lead to open season on abortion doctors. Kaye said he doubts Roeder's lawyers will actually be able to pull together such a defence. "Lawyers when they try a case are concerned first and foremost with defending somebody - no matter how unattractive and controversial - within the bounds of the law," Kaye said, "and they expect the judge to recognize that, and he has."

National Cancer Institute Dismissive of Abortion's Cancer Rate Although Double the Cancer Caused by Second-Hand Smoke

It's all well and good for shrill ideological bloggers to declare that somebody who takes a serious interest in a 40 percent increased risk of breast cancer caused by abortion must be "anti-choice, anti-women and anti-health." But if recent research findings hold up, such rhetoric will be a poor strategy for abortion providers.

If they don't disclose the increased cancer risk to women who are deciding whether to buy abortions from them, they may be explaining why not to exasperated trial juries. With research indicating an increased risk approximately double that of second-hand smoke, abortionists' insurers are almost certainly concerned about the prospect of tobacco-sized negligence or battery awards to cancer-stricken young women and their survivors.

Lorne Gunter's article in (Canada's) National Post is a nuanced, sensible analysis of the recent cancer controversy.

What Scientists Don't Tell You About Abortion

By Lorne Gunter, National Post

For the past month or so, the pro-life community has been buzzing. It would appear that at long last one of the leading breast-cancer researchers in the world, Louise Brinton, chief of the hormonal and reproductive epidemiology branch of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), has admitted a link between abortion and a higher risk of breast cancer among women.

Dr. Brinton's admission - if you can call it that - is not exactly straightforward. She is one of the co-authors of a study of 1,600 Seattle women that seems to show a 40% greater chance of a woman developing breast cancer if she has had an abortion. Still, even such an indirect concession by Dr. Brinton would be remarkable. In 2003, Dr. Brinton chaired a conference on the ABC (abortion-breast cancer) link for the NCI and invited "over 100 of the world's leading experts" to attend.

To that point, worldwide, 29 of 38 studies in the previous 40 years had shown a slightly elevated risk for breast cancer among women who had prematurely terminated a pregnancy - somewhere between 30% and 100% greater risk, right in the range of the new Seattle study. Interestingly, though, none of the authors of the raised-risk studies was invited to the NCI conference, nor were any of their findings discussed. Yet at the end of the conference, it was declared to be "well established" that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk."

Frankly, the whole event reminded me of a United Nations conference on global warming: Invite only those scientists who agree with the preconceived conclusions of the gathering's organizers. Ignore (or even suppress) any research that tends to disprove their theories. And in the end, declare that the "science is settled" because all the world's "experts" have said so. So while Dr. Brinton has only signed off on the conclusions of a single Seattle study - she has made no public admission of a change of thinking - the fact she chose to associate herself with a study showing an ABC link is important.

But is the risk the study shows truly significant? Not really. Most epidemiologists don't worry too much until the elevated risk for any single factor reaches 200%, and they only worry then if the level is repeated in study after study. For instance, smokers are 1,400% more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers, even non-smokers who inhale a lot of secondhand smoke. The increased risk of contracting cancer from smoking is clear.

Dr. Brinton and the other Seattle researchers controlled for women's ages, their family history of breast cancer, lactation history and how long they had taken birth control pills. They even sorted out those subjects who had never been pregnant from those who had so theirs would be an apples-to-apples study. Only women who had been pregnant were surveyed. Then the cancer rates of those who had not ended their pregnancies were compared with those who had.

As several defenders of the "well-established" view on ABC have pointed out, the Seattle study did not correct for income or obesity or any of a handful of other factors that similar health studies have accounted for. Therefore, they argue, the elevated risk seen in this latest study might well just be statistical static. And it might be.

But why then the rush to denounce anyone who so much as asks questions about the conventional view on the subject? (Again, a parallel between the ABC debate and the global warming debate.) One blogger wrote that anyone supporting the Seattle research was "anti-choice, anti-women and anti-health." The answer, of course, is that even cancer research is now politicized. For more than a decade there have been several reputable scientists convinced of a small ABC risk. But they have been unable to get heard over the din of name-calling and character assassination that the pro-choice side has thrown up to prevent any claw-back of abortion rights.

There is plenty of hypocrisy in this, too. Second-hand smoke increases non-smokers' risk of lung cancer by less then 20%, even with prolonged, heavy exposure. That's about half the apparent increased risk of developing breast cancer from having an abortion. Yet governments have passed all sorts of laws shielding the public from secondhand smoke at work, the arena, the mall and the stadium. This is pure bias. Politicians and cause pleaders favour abortion and oppose smoking, so they admit risks only as it suits their agendas.