SACRAMENTO
As intensive care units filled and coronavirus cases surged over the holidays, Carmela Coyle invoked a World War II-era quote attributed to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to rally her own troops: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Coyle is head of the California Hospital Association, and her “troops” are the highly paid hospital executives she represents. Throughout the pandemic, as in the December memo in which she quoted Churchill, she has employed battlefield rhetoric to galvanize their massive political and financial clout.
That’s because Coyle believes hospitals are quite simply “in battle conditions” a sentiment she has impressed upon the state’s top healthcare officials.