Drug, Wall St moguls give lavishly to Princeton hospital
Princeton HealthCare System raised its target to $150 million after pharmacy, investment and insurance executives gave more than expected
One area hospital has found it so easy to raise money, they're now asking for more.
While Congress is fighting over whether and how to pay for Obama's Medicaid expansion and other costly healthcare programs for the poor and middle class, a hospital in the wealthy Princeton, NJ area has raised millions more than it asked for and is adding fancy new labs and wings, with help from big donations by rich local drug, insurance and investment executives and their foundations.
Princeton HealthCare System has raised so much private money it can "re-imagine" its planned University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro complex, says hospital boss Barry Rabner.
Rabner says he's increased the fundraising target to $150 million, from $115 million, after the original campaign, led by Johnson & Johnson executive JoAnn Heffernan Heisen, and Bob Doll, an executive at the BlackRock investment group, passed its goal this winter. "It's been a robust campaign," he told me in an email. "We attribute our succcess to the merits of the project."
The 630,000-square-foot hospital will cost more than $450 million in all, with the balance paid from borrowed money, savings, and land sales, says Princeton spokeswoman Carol Norris.
Princeton's top donation was $25 million from David R. Atkinson, a former executive at the West Conshohocken-based investment firm Miller Anderson & Sherrerd, who struck it rich when the firm was bought by Morgan Stanley in 200x (Atkinson has also given $80 million to his old college, Cornell).
Other major donors include the Starr Foundation, funded by Maurice Greenberg, ex-CEO of American International Group, the giant insurer bailed out by US taxpayers in 2008, and other AIG veterans; William A. Schreyer, former chairman of the former giant stockbrokerage Merrill Lynch, taken over by Bank of America to keep it from failing in 2008; foundations backed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and by one of the Johnson & Johnson founding family's foundations; and investment manager Gordon Gund.
Among other things, Princeton will use the extra money to double the number of beds in its pediatric unit, open a geriatric emergency room, invite a university research department to locate at its cancer center, and expand planned vascular and neurosurgery operating rooms.