Senator Frist

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Phil Bate PhD

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> Another fearless leader:

>>>

>>><< Apparently the senator considers defrauding the government " benign. " >>

>>>

>>>Noticed at

>>><http://www.whatreallyhappened.com>http://www.whatreallyhappened.com --

>>>

>>>http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/08/news-ireland.php

>>>The Bad Doctor

>>>Bill Frist’s long record of corporate vices

>>>by Doug Ireland

>>>JANUARY 10 - 16, 2003

>>>

>>>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 senator has always claimed no current connection to HCA because the

>>>$26 million he and his wife hold in the company’s stock is in a so-called

>>> " blind trust. " But it was the family’s dirty money that bought Frist a

>>>place in the Senate. In 1994, Frist — who’d never bothered to vote before

>>>first running for the Senate that year — spent some $3.4 million of his

>>>personal fortune to buy the seat from Tennessee (HCA’s headquarters) that

>>>he now occupies. Moreover, " In the Senate, Frist has used his influence

>>>to further HCA’s cause by stopping a strong patients’ bill of rights,

>>>gridlocking a mandatory Medicare prescription-drug benefit, and promoting

>>>caps on damages for victims who sue negligent hospitals like HCA’s, "

>>>points out Jamie Court, executive director of the Santa Monica–based

>>>Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, who adds, " The Senate should

>>>not replace a racist with a principal backer of one of the largest

>>>corporate swindles ever perpetrated against the American public. If Frist

>>>was a patriot first, he would have sold his HCA stock long ago. "

>>>

>>>But Frist’s pandering to the lobbyists of the voracious health-care

>>>industry knows no bounds. " Frist isn’t the senator from Tennessee —

he’s

>>>the senator from the state of Health Care Industry Influence — he’s

>>>gotten more than $2 million from the health-care sector, giving him the

>>>dubious distinction of raising more cash from health-care interests than

>>>98 percent of his colleagues, " says Nick Nyhart, executive director of

>>>Public Campaign.

>>>

>>>Consider the special servicing he gave to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

>>>In another example of his " patriotism, " Frist engineered the insertion

>>>into the Homeland Security bill of a provision that would protect Eli

>>>Lilly from lawsuits over Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in

>>>its vaccines. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Lilly by

>>>parents who believe Thimerosal caused autism and other neurological

>>>maladies in their kids. The Frist-authored rider shields Lilly by forcing

>>>those lawsuits into a special " vaccine court, " where they can be easily

>>>scuttled, potentially saving Lilly hundreds of millions. The

>>>pharmaceutical industry was the largest single contributor to the

>>>National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that Frist chaired,

>>>ladling out some $4 million — and Lilly was the single biggest

>>>contributor to the GOP from that industry, having given $1.6 million in

>>>the last election cycle, 79 percent of it to Republicans.

>>>

>>>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. Frist has, of course,

>>>personally raked it in from the interested industries, gobbling up

>>>$123,750 in campaign cash from the HMOs and $265,023 from the

>>>pharmaceutical industry. Frist also took $130,204 from the

>>>food-processing industry — and then helped kill a bill putting teeth into

>>>the USDA’s authority to crack down on processing plants that violate

>>>federal standards for bacterial and viral infection of meat and poultry.

>>>

>>>There’s a lot more, like this — so much that it leads to an inescapable

>>>conclusion: In the Senate, " Good Samaritan " Frist has almost daily

>>>violated the injunction of the physicians’ Hippocratic oath: " First, do

>>>no harm. "