Kaiser's Cynthia Telles Puts 5,000 Square-Foot House Up for Sale

Has Kaiser's Cynthia Telles decided to pull up the stakes and head for the hills?

Telles, one of the members of Kaiser Permanente's vastly overpaid Board of Directors, is selling her 4,670 square-foot house in Sherman Oaks, a pricey Los Angeles suburb. 5 Bedrooms. 6 Baths. Brazilian mahogany floors. 4-car garage.

Check out this pic of her dining room. (More pics below.)

By all accounts, it's been a difficult few months for Telles.

Cynthia also happens to sit on the Board of Directors of scandal-plagued General Motors, which faces at least $35 million in government fines and multiple class-action lawsuits for illegally covering up defects in its cars that contributed to the deaths of at least 13 people.

GM pays Telles $200,000 a year to sit on its board. However, the ongoing revelations about the scandal appear to be too much for Telles, who recently announced that she plans to resign her seat.

At Kaiser, Telles pockets another $226,000 a year for attending just six board meetings a year. (The 1% really struggles, right?) At Kaiser, Telles has been under fire for being MIA during the ongoing crisis gripping Kaiser's mental health services.

Telles -- a psychologist -- is the only member of Kaiser's board with any mental health training. Nonetheless, she refuses to meet with Kaiser's own psychologists to discuss the crisis at Kaiser... which has already resulted in a $4 million fine by government investigators, three class-action action lawsuits by patients, multiple suicides linked to Kaiser's delayed care, and a call for a criminal investigation into Kaiser's falsification of appointment records.

Telles at Airport Commission

Recently, Kaiser caregivers spoke at a meeting of the Los Angeles Airport Commission (yup, Cynthia also sits on that board) and asked her why she failed to answer any of the 100+ personal letters from Kaiser mental health therapists -- which NUHW ultimately posted on a website called DearCynthiaTelles.com

Last week, Northern California’s East Bay Express blasted Kaiser in a front-page article called "Deadly Delays," which describes suicides connected to Kaiser's deliberate delays in providing mental health care to its patients.

So why has Telles decided to put her colossal crib up for sale? 

Perhaps she's planning to downgrade to a 300,000 square-foot pied a terre now that she'll be missing that yearly $200K check from GM.

If Cynthia needs any relocation advice, I'm sure Tasty's readers would have plenty of creative ideas.

Here are more pics of Cynthia's house... in case you're in the market.

NUHW Takes Fight to SEIU's Corporate Bunkmates

As SEIU-UHW dives deeper under the covers with its pinstriped patrons, the folks over at NUHW are waging an interesting battle against SEIU’s favorite bedmate, Kaiser Permanente.

Two of the members of Kaiser’s Board of Directors -- Christine Cassel and Jenny Ming -- resigned their positions after NUHW exposed their six-figure conflicts of interest. Today, only 13 people remain on the corruption-tainted board, including Phil “Brazil Butt” Marineau.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Telles -- another board member -- is under fire for ignoring Kaiser’s mental health crisis and for her connection to the ongoing scandal at General Motors, where she also serves on the Board of Directors.

Apparently, “Six-Figure Cynthia” is none too popular these days after turning a blind eye to Kaiser’s suicides and GM’s fatal ignition switches… while all the while pocketing a half-million dollars a year from the two mega-corporations.

Check out this website -- www.DearCynthiaTelles.com -- which features letters to Telles from Kaiser’s patients and mental health clinicians. The letters are jaw-dropping. Here's an excerpt from one by a Kaiser clinician:

Most of the patients I see have life-altering diagnoses such as Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Major Depression. They struggle with suicidality, medication compliance, substance abuse, daily hallucinations, hopelessness, and lack of social or familial support… Most clinics are significantly understaffed, forcing patients to wait on average 4 to 8 weeks for their follow-up appointments. Can you imagine sitting with a patient who is in emotional pain, has finally come to you for support, perhaps disclosing a history of traumatic sexual abuse for the first time, doing your best to build an alliance with them and give them hope, only to then tell them, “I’ll see you in 6 weeks?”

And here's a letter from one of Kaiser's patients:

I have been a patient of KP Psychiatry Department at three KP locations… For many of us, initially asking for mental health treatment is an incredible hurdle. Often the choice to leap or die is made by the glimmer of hope that someone will be on the other side ready to help. I chose to leap. Two years later I thought I made the wrong decision. I was not alone… It was obvious the therapists were overloaded… My condition worsened and I switched medications. Nothing seemed to work. After three years, I gave up.

Meanwhile, NUHW’s mental health clinicians continue to take Kaiser to task by launching departmental strikes, filing lawsuits, and winning a $4 million fine from government investigators for Kaiser’s severe mental health violations, which appear to be identical to the scandal rocking the VA hospitals. 

NUHW’s efforts have been joined by patients, who've filed a class-action lawsuit against Kaiser for illegally depriving patients of mental health care. 

Stay tuned!