Health Service "Employers" - who day?

I'm often struck by the manipulation of language in modern life. During the current dispute with the nurses, that odd grouping the Health Service Employers have been on the box every once and a while.

Now none of these so called Health Service Employers are actually employers in the real sense of the word. They are more like glorified junior vice presidents. It is the state that pays the salaries for the doctors, nurses and other staff at the hospitals. Whatever boards of management may be left over from the days when the nuns or whoever ran the hospitals aren't involved in employing the staff. We employ those working in the health service and we appoint a government every once in a while to run it on our behalf.

Also on the nurses dispute you'd swear from the HSE that there had never been a operation or procedure cancelled or delayed prior to the nurses dispute starting. Thing again strangely the INO isn't saying much about that either.