1.  Kaiser Permanente is a medical care program consisting of three partnership entities - the Kaiser Health Plan, the Kaiser Hospitals, and the FOR PROFIT Permanente medical groups;

2.  The largest two medical groups are The Permanente Medical Group, Inc. covering Northern California or TPMG (a for profit corporation) and the Southern California Permanente Medical 
Group or SCPMG (a for profit partnership);  each are set up to create stock dividends for the physician partners;kpgivesoutfakebondinfo

3. My current estimate for last year being $160,000 per partner, although a last minute bonus distribution in December of 2003 might have funneled some of the same money through a different path to the same physicians; this comes off the Tahoe Accord awarding the physicians half of the nearly $1 billion in "net income" (read profits) of KP last year (primary and signed documents now available);

The Permanente physicians have an ENORMOUS reason to cut corners on patient care at Kaiser.  It is not only to have a good future organization with which to bargain but it is to realize their own accumulated work product from the past.  Since the retirement package at Kaiser is very generous, it is like having 25% of your salary held back to make sure you play the game right until the day you retire.  And since you have no contract at Kaiser, you serve to some extent on whim.  In fact, they have moved away from the tenure approach of the past and run more on cooperative whim - a perfect way to herd cats.

This better explains to me how a certain Kaiser physician in Fresno was able to accumulate $500,000 in value from Kaiser just four years out of training in New York.  Deposing him on rapid net gain income will help, someday, to crack open this Death Star.

1.  The Permanente Medical Group is for profit each share in Northern California being worth $10,000; quick home loans through Kaiser companies help enhance the benefits of minimizing care;

2.  The physicians are told in the Permanente Journal to get involved in politics and medical societies to promote the Permanente Promise, not really to advance general medicine itself;

3.  Collaborative team care is being substituted for physician care to save money and keep the stock value for physicians rising at about 18% a year;

4.  Dr. Lawrence's new salary as of the year 2000 was over $2 million a year, not counting all of his corporate duties within Kaiser contractors and alliances - PGE, Caretouch, Raffles Medical Group, pharmaceutical companies, etc. (the salary source is their own 990 IRS reporting form);

5.  The methodology of patient terrorism in Kaiser is buried in arbitrations as Kaiser fends of class action legal suits at every turn - in San Francisco, in Seattle, etc.;