Abusing Both Medicare and Politics

The New York Times ^ | April 10, 2014 | New York Times Editorial Board

[proxy_user]

Earlier this week, the Medicare system for the first time released a list of its payments to individual doctors, showing that just a few doctors accounted for a huge fraction of Medicare payments. As Frances Robles and Eric Lipton of The Times reported on Thursday, two of those doctors had given lavishly to Democratic politicians in hopes of getting Medicare investigators off their backs.

The country’s top recipient of Medicare dollars was Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who has been repeatedly investigated for overbilling the government for an eye medication. In 2012, he received $21 million in Medicare reimbursements. That same year, he donated $700,000 to Majority PAC, a super PAC run by associates of Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, which in turn spent almost all of it to help re-elect Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a crony of Dr. Melgen.

...

The other big Medicare biller was Dr. Asad Qamar, a Florida cardiologist, who received $18.2 million from the program in 2012, by far the most of any cardiologist. That led to a review by the program, which no doubt was an incentive for political donations. He gave more than $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee and its state branches, along with contributions to the campaigns of President Obama and many congressional candidates. Then he hired a lobbyist to contact lawmakers to get federal investigators to back down.

[proxy_user]

Well, there seems to be little doubt as to what particular party these evil politicians belong to. In the end, the Editorial Board tears into the Supreme Court superPAC decision, but there is little doubt that these doctors would find any way they could to play the system.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

So when is the Paper of Garbage going to write a haughty editorial criticizing the millions of dollars wasted on state exchanges that aren’t running and on the POS Obamacare website.

[gusopol3]

nothing wrong with individuals’ spending large amounts of money to gain influence over elected officials. As long as that remains a protected “First Amendment right” and not a crime, the scandals will continue.

It suits their purpose to play dumb and conflate two very different things, like the Koch brothers giving money to Americans for Prosperity to run TV ads is no different from a bribe paid to a Senator to intervene with a federal agency.

[Rembrandt]

If you add an “s” to the word “lavishly” describing the way the scandalous doc contributes to menendez, you end up with the word - slavishly, which is probably a more apt descriptor.

[Nifster]

And weren’t these bozos in government supposed to end waste, FRAUD, and abuse???? We see how well that worked out