budget gap

Last week, we discussed how the large incentives for pharmaceutical executives to meet short term financial targets (that is, "making their numbers") may be an important cause of their firms' decreasing capacity to fulfill their most basic mission, manufacturing pure, unadulterated medicines. 

In the news recently were two examples of how other health care leaders are incentivized to meet short-term financial targets.

University of California

The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported how students at the University of California have been providing a satirical approach to the problems of the university's leadership:

It's been a seriously dramatic year at the University of California, where hundreds of students seized buildings, demonstrated and shut down regents meetings last fall to protest rising tuition and the perceived privatization of the public school.

To make up a $7 million budget gap, the state Department of Health will abandon two plans that had the potential to save lives.