From the Associated Press:
In a confidential email sent to fellow Ohio tea party leaders and obtained by The Associated Press, Tom Zawistowski laid out a strategy for invoking a little-known IRS provision that allows citizens to challenge executive salaries and the nonprofit statuses of charitable hospitals. …
Zawistowski identifies the hospitals as big backers of expanded Medicaid. His email said tea party groups will “make Medicaid personal” by publicizing large salaries of those seeking federal money to help the poor.
…“The goal is to change the narrative,” Zawistowski wrote. Rather than have people wondering why tea party groups don’t want to help the poor, they should wonder why hospitals need more federal tax dollars to care for the poor when they’ve got plenty of cash on hand, he wrote.
Zawistowski said by phone that [Ohio Governor Kasich] has “hauled out” hospital CEOs at pro-Medicaid rallies that are making millions of dollars. In his emails, he singles out the $2.5 million salary of Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove, whose nonprofit hospital had more than $9 billion in assets in 2011.
“This guy’s making $2 million a year, pleading poverty to help poor people,” he said. “It just seems a little disingenuous to us in the tea party who volunteer for nothing. We’re curious to see their definition of poverty.”