Rick Tyler, head of Gingrich Super Pac and architect of Gingrich's surge

Rick Tyler, the head of Newt Gingrich’s Super Pac, was on Steve Bannon’s KABC Victory Sessions this evening and revealed the next phase of their attack on Mitt Romney: tying Mitt Romney to Damon Corp, perpetrator of one of the largest Medicare frauds in American history. Tyler plans to spend $10 million in Florida, though he has “not yet” raised the money needed. Tyler is promising to also connect Romney to Charlie Christ.

When it comes to Medicare fraud, Tyler is referring to Bain Capital’s controlling interest in Damon Corp, a medical testing company located in Needham, Massachusetts. During the time that Mitt Romney headed Bain and therefore controlled Damon Corp., Damon Corp. was busy submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims for blood tests to Medicare to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Romney served on the board of Damon Corp. from 1990 to 1993. Bain Capital more than tripped its initial investment when Corning Inc. purchased Damon Corp. Romney personally made $473,000. Although Romney claims that the fraudulent practices stopped in December 1992, a Boston Globe investigation concluded that the practices were ongoing until at least mid-July 1993, when Damon Corp. was in negotiations with Corning Inc.

In 1996 Damon Corp. pled guilty to a federal conspiracy charge of defrauding the government of $25 million between 1988 and 1993. Damon Corp. paid a record $119 million fine. Then-US Attorney Donald Stern labeled “a case, pure and simple, of corporate greed run amok.”

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech discuss Medicare’s quarter-billion dollars spent on penis pumps for elderly men, how this is indicative of larger Medicare fraud and how lobbyists perpetuate the system.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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In an action that one Florida GOP consultant said could be a late game-changer, a lawsuit was filed on August 9, 2010, seeking the release of a videotaped deposition given by GOP Gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott in April 2010, just days before he announced his candidacy.

The lawsuit, filed by Florida attorney Steve Andrews, contends that in March 2004, a company owned and directed by Rick Scott, Solantic LLC applied for a Florida Medical Care License for six clinics.  The application listed Dr. Mark Glencross as the “Medical Director” for each of the clinics. Dr. Glencross, who had been an employee at Solantic, claimed he had never been asked nor given consent for his name to be included on the application.  And he was never the Medical Director for the clinics.  Under Florida law, it is a felony of the third degree to file false or misleading information on facility licensure applications. Glencross filed a lawsuit against Solantic in 2008 alleging fraud.  Although it is uncommon for top executives to be questioned in cases such as this, Rick Scott was personally deposed on April 6, 2010 – six days before announcing his Gubernatorial bid.  Almost immediately after the deposition, Solantic settled the lawsuit with Glencross for an undisclosed sum.  As part of the agreement, the videotaped deposition of Scott was not filed with the Duval County Clerk’s office. (more…)

If the goal of the President’s proposal was to drive doctors into hospital based practices or community health centers, or if it was to break the spirit of providers and bend them to the will of the government that holds the threat of criminal prosecution over their heads if they are found to be Medicare cheats, or if the goal was to dumb down the practice of medicine by ramping up the power of the HHS secretary and the evidence-based medicine posse, then the President’s proposal for health care reform was successful.

However, we as physicians are individuals. There are approximately 890,000 doctors currently practicing in the US. Those of us who want the autonomy to practice medicine the way we were trained, those of us who run a private practice who are entrepreneurs at heart, those who are tired of being pitted against our patients and other physicians (the specialist vs. primary care physician meme), and those who are just sick and tired are NOT going to take this. Those of us who can will retire or leave medicine all together. Those within the system will simply opt out.

The President’s summit on Thursday amounts to nothing more than six hours of theater. Not one physician in Congress has been invited to attend. The physicians for single payer have also not been invited. It is his chance to hear from the people on the front line, and it is obvious this bill is NOT about the health of our people. It is about raising revenue, controlling the medical industrial complex completely. How else can you explain the proposal for the government to a) take over control of the cost of insurance premiums; b) limit provider medical decisions based on cost, and c) control what is medically covered for the patient. Under the proposed health care reformed, the government will control how much an insurance company can charge, decide what is covered medically, and sanction the provider for deviating from the norm.

These are some of the proposal highlights that concerned me the most:

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Kaiser Permanente (KP) would appear to be the frontrunner to head up the government-administered Medicare buy-in plan devised by Senate Democrats, especially since the company was ranked as the number one Medicare plan in November. In addition, KP–in compliance with the Obama agenda to have all medical records electronic by 2014–has heavily invested in electronic medical records (EMR) and has even linked two of the largest electronic medical record systems in the country—allowing doctors and nurses at Kaiser and VA hospitals and clinics in San Diego county to access certain information about patients who receive care from both health systems. KP’s merging of the two systems also can be thought of as the flagship model for EMR convergence, leading to an EMR platform under a single-payer, universal health system.

With this type of progress and plan ratings, KP would be a natural fit and even help facilitate the transition to a single-payer system. Even the Democrats in the Senate seem to think that, after demonizing the insurance companies, they could overlook the insurance industry’s greed and other flaws and have them run their new compromise “non-public” option plan.

Furthermore, KP’s chairman and CEO George Halvorson, who took the helm in 2002, has met with Obama and has had several meetings with key figures in the health care debate, including:

March 27–Meeting with Keith Fontenot, who manages the financial resources of government agencies related to health. He oversees funds for Medicare, Medicaid, all U.S. public health agencies, and the entire Health and Human Services Department, from the Food and Drug Administration to the National Institutes of Health.

June 5–Meeting with Peter Orszag, director of the CBO.

July 23–Meeting with Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)

July 24–Meeting with Sarah Fenn, who is a $36,000-a-year White House assistant. Fenn is an attorney and also served as the state legal Voter Protection Director for the Obama campaign in Indiana, Kentucky, and New Hampshire, as well as campaign field staff in Iowa, Idaho, Texas, and Florida.

Halvorson was the only insurance executive to meet with Sebelius.

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First, a brief congratulations to all on having seemingly killed the public option. Without our efforts, it would be en route to becoming law. Now there will not be a government owned, government run and government subsidized insurance company that will put all others out of business.

But the current proposal Reid is loudly trumpeting is horribly flawed as well.

It has all of the old flaws (minus the public option) in that the government, through the Secretary of Health, will decide who gets what treatment at what cost and will force rationing through an artificial scarcity on all people, particularly the elderly. And it still has such high premiums for young uninsured people that it will compete with student loans for the honor of being their number one headache.

But the compromise itself is flawed:

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Alaska’s $680 million bridge to nowhere still a state priority

17,000 Medicaid patients put on waiting lists for medical services in Maryland as the state misspends $98 million including paying for services for dead people

Medicare loses $60 billion to fraud every year

Democrat political consultants receive millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds; Millions more spent to heat a near-empty shopping mall, to search for fossils in Argentina, for socially conscious puppet shows, and to study the genetic makeup of ants

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The Senate earmarks $500,000 for itself; Money will be spent to promote Senators’ appearances

House of Representative’s expense reports now online

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers in just a few months and House Majority Whip James Clyburn spent hundreds of dollars on donuts

Congress steers millions of taxpayer dollars to campaign donors’ pet projects including an earmark for “mammal awareness”

The Justice Department has instructed federal agencies to honor contracts with ACORN despite ban on funding passed by Congress and signed by the President

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From the Associated Press:

The government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims including medical treatment showing little relation to a patient’s condition, wasting taxpayer dollars at a rate nearly three times the previous year.

Excerpts of a new federal report, obtained by The Associated Press, show a dramatic increase in improper payments in the $440 billion Medicare program that has been cited by government auditors as a high risk for fraud and waste for 20 years.

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