While Bush Pushes To Privatize Government, His Privateers Supporters Rob Government
While the Bush/Cheney regime tries to privatize government, this is what private providers have done to Medicare. From the Washington Post: "Health-care providers are allowed to collect millions of dollars in federal Medicare payments each year despite owing the government more than $2 billion in back taxes, congressional investigators said yesterday.
"The Government Accountability Office found that more than 27,000 nursing homes, hospitals, physicians and other providers flouted the tax system while collecting Medicare fees in 2006. That represented 6 percent of all providers in a Medicare program that served 43.2 million people and paid out $402 billion in benefits that year.
"Some cases cited in the new report were especially egregious. They included a nursing home operator with a history of asset concealment schemes who filed $15 million in Medicare claims while owing $7 million in unpaid taxes and establishing a charitable foundation that purchased luxury cars for the owner's personal use
"And there was the hospital that collected $21 million in Medicare fees while owing $15 million in taxes, mostly for failing to forward to the Internal Revenue Service payroll taxes that were withheld from employees' checks."
Let's not forget the fraudulence of former Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist's family corporation.
From LAWeekly: "While TV gushed last week over the Republicans’ new Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, intervening in a traffic accident, portraying the former heart surgeon as a "Good Samaritan," in truth the GOP has simply replaced a racist with a corporate crook.
"Frist was born rich, and got richer — thanks to massive criminal fraud by the family business. The basis of the Frist family fortune is HCA Inc. (Hospital Corporation of America), the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country, which was founded by Frist’s father and brother. And, just as Karl Rove was engineering the scuttling of Trent Lott and the elevation of Frist, the Bush Justice Department suddenly ended a near-decadelong federal investigation into how HCA for years had defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare (the federal program that covers the military and their families), giving the greedy health-care behemoth’s executives a sweetheart settlement that kept them out of the can.
"The government’s case was that HCA kept two sets of books and fraudulently overbilled the government. The deal meant that HCA agreed to pay the government $631 million for its lucrative scams — which, on top of previous fines, brought the total government penalties against the health-care conglomerate to a whopping $1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in history, breaking the old record set by Drexel Burnham.
"The deal also meant that HCA can continue to participate in Medicare. And, as part of the Bushies’ deal shutting down what Deputy Assistant FBI Director Thomas Kubic called "one of the FBI’s highest-priority white-collar crime investigations," no criminal charges were brought against the top HCA execs who presided over the illegal bilking of federal programs designed to aid the poor — and that includes Senator Frist’s brother, Thomas, HCA’s former CEO (and current director), who’s been described by Forbes magazine as "one of the richest men in America," with a personal fortune estimated at close to $2 billion.
"What did HCA do? It inflated its expenses and billed the government for the overrun; it billed the government for services ineligible for reimbursement (like advertising and marketing costs). HCA violated both law and medical ethics when, as Forbes put it, "the company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors’ referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors ‘loans’ that were never expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture — and free drugs from hospital pharmacies."
"This is the ethical climate that reigned in the Frist family’s money machine. In an unguarded moment, Senator Frist told the Boston Globe that conversations with his doctor father about the family calling were like "benign versions of the Godfather and Michael Corleone." Apparently the senator considers defrauding the government "benign." So too does the Bush White House, which dictated the Justice Department deal with HCA that let the crooks escape jail just as Frist was being anointed the Senate’s majority leader. A pure coincidence in timing, of course.
"The good Dr. Frist voted against patients’ rights to sue their HMOs for failure to provide adequate treatment, and voted to give tax subsidies to HMOs and insurance companies to offer prescription drugs to seniors, rather than providing them through Medicare."
Bush and his administration, Frist and other Bushites, and these Medicare scamming providers are absolutely rotten and corrupt criminals and should be in the slammer.
"The Government Accountability Office found that more than 27,000 nursing homes, hospitals, physicians and other providers flouted the tax system while collecting Medicare fees in 2006. That represented 6 percent of all providers in a Medicare program that served 43.2 million people and paid out $402 billion in benefits that year.
"Some cases cited in the new report were especially egregious. They included a nursing home operator with a history of asset concealment schemes who filed $15 million in Medicare claims while owing $7 million in unpaid taxes and establishing a charitable foundation that purchased luxury cars for the owner's personal use
"And there was the hospital that collected $21 million in Medicare fees while owing $15 million in taxes, mostly for failing to forward to the Internal Revenue Service payroll taxes that were withheld from employees' checks."
Let's not forget the fraudulence of former Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist's family corporation.
From LAWeekly: "While TV gushed last week over the Republicans’ new Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, intervening in a traffic accident, portraying the former heart surgeon as a "Good Samaritan," in truth the GOP has simply replaced a racist with a corporate crook.
"Frist was born rich, and got richer — thanks to massive criminal fraud by the family business. The basis of the Frist family fortune is HCA Inc. (Hospital Corporation of America), the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country, which was founded by Frist’s father and brother. And, just as Karl Rove was engineering the scuttling of Trent Lott and the elevation of Frist, the Bush Justice Department suddenly ended a near-decadelong federal investigation into how HCA for years had defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare (the federal program that covers the military and their families), giving the greedy health-care behemoth’s executives a sweetheart settlement that kept them out of the can.
"The government’s case was that HCA kept two sets of books and fraudulently overbilled the government. The deal meant that HCA agreed to pay the government $631 million for its lucrative scams — which, on top of previous fines, brought the total government penalties against the health-care conglomerate to a whopping $1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in history, breaking the old record set by Drexel Burnham.
"The deal also meant that HCA can continue to participate in Medicare. And, as part of the Bushies’ deal shutting down what Deputy Assistant FBI Director Thomas Kubic called "one of the FBI’s highest-priority white-collar crime investigations," no criminal charges were brought against the top HCA execs who presided over the illegal bilking of federal programs designed to aid the poor — and that includes Senator Frist’s brother, Thomas, HCA’s former CEO (and current director), who’s been described by Forbes magazine as "one of the richest men in America," with a personal fortune estimated at close to $2 billion.
"What did HCA do? It inflated its expenses and billed the government for the overrun; it billed the government for services ineligible for reimbursement (like advertising and marketing costs). HCA violated both law and medical ethics when, as Forbes put it, "the company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors’ referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors ‘loans’ that were never expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture — and free drugs from hospital pharmacies."
"This is the ethical climate that reigned in the Frist family’s money machine. In an unguarded moment, Senator Frist told the Boston Globe that conversations with his doctor father about the family calling were like "benign versions of the Godfather and Michael Corleone." Apparently the senator considers defrauding the government "benign." So too does the Bush White House, which dictated the Justice Department deal with HCA that let the crooks escape jail just as Frist was being anointed the Senate’s majority leader. A pure coincidence in timing, of course.
"The good Dr. Frist voted against patients’ rights to sue their HMOs for failure to provide adequate treatment, and voted to give tax subsidies to HMOs and insurance companies to offer prescription drugs to seniors, rather than providing them through Medicare."
Bush and his administration, Frist and other Bushites, and these Medicare scamming providers are absolutely rotten and corrupt criminals and should be in the slammer.
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