Almost 100 years ago, the taxpayers of Georgia gave a gift to Emory University -- Atlanta Medical College, founded by the Georgia General Assembly in the 1850s at taxpayer expense.
Atlanta Medical College was renamed the Emory University School of Medicine. No trace of it remains today. On its former home across the street from Grady Memorial Hospital sits the Emory Faculty Building.
The taxpayers of Atlanta also gave Emory a gift – exclusive use of Grady Memorial Hospital as a training facility for its physicians.
Emory officials complain about the "burden" of it now, but back in the 1940s, Emory fought Oglethorpe University's now defunct medical school for the right to train its doctors at this highly-regarded, public hospital. This is the hospital where Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone With the Wind,” died after being struck by a car in Downtown Atlanta.
DeKalb County taxpayers also have given Emory an enormous gift – a tax break worth tens of millions of dollars over decades. Emory has been exempt from property taxes because it is a teaching institution with a religious affiliation. It has not paid any taxes despite the university’s growing footprint for education and other related activities in the county.
Meanwhile, Fulton and DeKalb taxpayers also pay for Emory physicians’ malpractice insurance and cover the cost of defending and paying off lawsuits for malpractice. All this is done through each county’s annual appropriation to Grady Hospital.
Taxpayers are not the only ones who have been generous to Emory. Everyone who has ever enjoyed that magical sugar beverage called Coca Cola is an Emory benefactor.
Robert Woodruff and many good people associated with Georgia's iconic Coca-Cola Company have given billions of dollars in cash and stock to endow Emory University and the jewel of its institution – the medical school.
You might think an institution as blessed as Emory might be so grateful that it would step up to financially assist the troubled Grady Memorial Hospital, but you would be wrong.
Emory, which claims to be owed $50 million by Grady (much of it undocumented, but that is another story), has loudly demanded its money. Others wonder why when the university has at least a $5 billion endowment.
State Sen. John Wiles, at a recent Senate hearing on Grady, wondered aloud what Mr. Woodruff might think of Emory's recent demands.
Emory, of course, will loudly protest this characterization. They will tell you that they are doing everything they can to help Grady.
Of course, their idea of "help" is lobbying the General Assembly to give tax money to Grady so that Grady can pay off Emory.
As state Rep. Steve Davis outlined in his recent column, Emory benefits enormously from its relationship with Grady.
But his column just touched on the tip of the iceberg. The taxpayers already give Emory millions of dollars every year to help train doctors and conduct research.
Emory makes millions more off Medicaid and other social welfare programs designed to help the poor.
Emory makes even more off health care monopolies granted by the state's certificate of need laws.
And their lobbyists are asking for even more.
I am not saying it was a mistake for the taxpayers to give Emory its medical school. They have produced good doctors who do fine work.
But it sure would be nice if, when it came to the taxpayers, Emory gave a little back – such as paying its own medical malpractice insurance and considering other options by renegotiating the contract with Grady hospital. Emory University’s medical school and its relationship with Grady. It can’t be a gift that just keeps on costing. |
