: ~Basil

: September 25, 2020 Author Whitney WebbComments(12)
: Researchers at a BSL-3 lab tied to the organizers of the 2001
: Dark Winter simulation, DARPA, and the post-9/11 biodefense
: industrial complex are genetically modifying anthrax to
: express Covid-19 components, according to FOIA documents.

: Soon after having been fired from his post as secretary of the
: treasury in December 2002, after a policy clash with the
: president, Paul O’Neill became a trustee of the University
: of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Despite having just worked

: under and clashed with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, it
: wasn’t until O’Neill began answering to UPMC CEO Jeffrey
: Romoff as a member of the Center’s board that he chose to
: publicly denounce a superior as “evil.”

: “He wants to destroy competition. He wants to be the only game
: in town,” O’Neill would later state of Romoff, adding that
: “after 18 months I quit [the UPMC board] in disgust” due to
: Romoff’s “absolute control” over the board’s actions.
: O’Neill subsequently noted that UPMC “board members who
: have wealth of hundreds of millions of dollars are not
: willing to take this guy on.” When pressed by a local
: reporter, O’Neill further elaborated that he had been told
: by other board members that they were “afraid” of Romoff
: because Romoff might “harm them in some way.”

: O’Neill’s criticisms of Romoff are hardly an outlier, as local
: community activists and even a state attorney general have
: noted that UPMC’s board lets Romoff do as he pleases.

: Jeffrey Romoff has ruled UPMC with an iron fist since his
: predecessor, Thomas Detre, had a heart attack in 1992. As a
: result of the Center’s massive wealth accumulation, at
: first spurred by his magic touch for receiving National
: Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, Detre was able to use
: the financial power afforded to him to consolidate control
: over enough of the University of Pittsburgh to create his
: “own personal fiefdom,” which is now the stand-alone
: corporation known as UPMC.

: Not long after Romoff took over the Center’s reins, he made
: his intentions clear to faculty and staff, stating at one
: 1995 UPMC meeting that his “vision” for the future of
: American health care was “the conversion of health care
: from social good to a commodity.” Motivated by profit above
: all else, Romoff aggressively expanded UPMC, gobbling up
: community hospitals, surgery centers, and private practices
: to create a “health-care network” that has expanded
: throughout much of Pennsylvania and even abroad to other
: countries, including China. Under Romoff, UPMC has also
: expanded into the health-insurance business, with 40
: percent of the medical claims it pays out going straight
: back into places of care that are owned by UPMC—meaning
: UPMC is essentially paying itself.

: In addition, since UPMC is officially a “charitable nonprofit
: corporation,” it is exempt from property taxes and has
: special access to the tax-exempt municipal bond market.
: UPMC can also solicit tax-deductible grants from private
: individuals and organizations, as well as governments.
: These grants totaled over $1 billion dollars between 2005
: and 2017.

: more:
: https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/engineering-contagion-upmc-corona-thrax-darkest-winter/