Blood Money-Mitt Romney

Knockout!

Hey man, why are you promoting attacks on capitalism? /s

Anyone lets a VC near their company gets what they deserve.

"Anyone lets a VC near their company gets what they deserve."

Sad thing is.. America might be hiring one if we can't get the word out soon enough.

I remember the good old day when a DUI could almost cost you the general election. Why is this man still running in a primary?

Romney's bad behavior Exposed by Seamus

"Romney Loses Nomination Over Dog Abuse? - Romney was traveling that summer with his wife, five sons, and Seamus to his parent's cottage on Lake Huron. But hours into the ride, Seamus apparently suffered diarrhea, which ran down the back window of the car. .David Kravitz wrote on BlueMassGroup, a liberal blog. "It also strikes me as classic Romney: it solves a problem efficiently, in a business-like manner, and with no regard whatsoever for the suffering that the solution may cause."

"But the details of the event are more than unseemly - they may, in fact, be illegal. Massachusetts's animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon. "An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying "it's definitely something I'd want to check out." The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it's against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and "if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal."

"Dog on Roof? What Was It Like for Romney's Pooch? - Scientists Say Dog Likely Experienced Wind-Whipped, Uncomfortable Trip - "Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. e'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog,".. Jordan Kaplan, the owner of Petaholics, a dog walking service in New York City,
and a lifelong dog owner and dog lover, said Romney's actions were uncalled for"

"Romney's dog - This is a distinction Mitt Romney probably could do without, but he is surely the first presidential candidate to be attacked for putting a dog with diarrhea in a carrier and tying it to the top of a station wagon. Romney's defense: Seamus liked it. [like the citizens under Romney's RomneyCARE, etc.?] "

"As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours. As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway."

"Story about dog on car roof comes back to bite Romney - 200 comments from readers complaining of animal cruelty"

Mitt Romney was a director of Damon not an executive. Four executives at Damon were indicted for conspiracy: Joseph Isola, Beno Kon, William Thurston and Gerald Kullen. None of the directors were indicted (I don't know how the executives explained the immediate and sustained increases in tests performed and revenues, as discussed below, and whether the board should have known).

I do remember when this happened, because I practice in this area of the law, but I had no idea Bain was involved, because Damon was owned by Corning at the time it was fined.

Damon's the 25th largest False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733) settlement in history. At the time, the criminal penalty portion was the largest ever recovered in a health care fraud prosecution and the largest criminal fine ever in Massachusetts.

The $119 million represented $35.2 million as a criminal fine and $83.7 to resolve related civil liabilities for $25 million in fraudulent billing.

(By comparison, I settled a FCA/Stark/Medicare Anti-Kickback claim for a client a few years earlier for under $15 million for claims of many, many multiples of $25 million, but there wasn't blatant fraud involved.)

The settlement includes the treble damages - three dollars recovered by the government for every fraudulent dollar billed - under the FCA.

What did Damon Labs do? For one, when a physician ordered a common blood panels, Damon bundled three extra tests in the blood panels even though the physician did not request the extra tests. Then Damon billed Medicare for the panels, and charged separately for the three tests.

And Damon did more. From one of the appellate cases in the government's prosecution of Thurston:

he essence of the scheme charged was that Damon, through Thurston and others, bundled the ferritin blood test-previously ordered by doctors less than two percent of the time-into a panel of blood tests known as the LabScan, which was ordered thirty to forty percent of the time. When doctors or patients (instead of insurers) paid for the bundled LabScan, Damon provided the ferritin test for free, leading doctors to believe there was no extra charge for this test. Doctors were not told that, when Medicare paid for the bundled LabScan, Medicare was charged extra for the ferritin test. Indeed, both a letter and marketing materials indicated the added ferritin test was “free”; that is, that there was no charge beyond the standard LabScan charge.
Those unnecessary ferritin tests were not free to Medicare.
Damon charged Medicare roughly $21 per ferritin test on top of the approximately $24 charged for the LabScan. Nor were doctors told that the ferritin test could be ordered separately; the test requisition form did not offer that option. The physicians, then, were induced to order and to certify as medically necessary a large number of ferritin tests that were not medically necessary.

Thurston was found guilty and for sentencing purposes was found to be "an organizer or leader of extensive criminal activiity" (a level-four enhancement). So he would be the organizer or leader of a fraud that the government said "involved literally millions of fraudulent claims" over a period of years - but wouldn't plead guilty as another defendant did because he would be shunned.

So: Mitt wasn't an officer or executive, he was a director, and only the executives were indicted and found guilty. However, the board would have seen increases in the number of tests ordered ("literally millions", per the goverment) and $25 million in revenues. Officers of the corporation would have explained these to the Board.

However the Board may have failed in its duty if there was no compliance plan and no compliance officer.

Mitt is lying when he says the company stopped the practice when he was on the board. According to the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "[t]he global settlement was reached with Corning, Inc., which earlier had purchased Damon and stopped the illegal billing."

Is the fact that this isn’t broadcast on Fox news or on the Rush Limbaugh show supposed to be some sort of sign of brilliance?

I’ve always had the feeling “fair and balanced” was just a trick. But what about “excellence in broadcasting?” Does “excellence” mean the ability to give Romney a pass and still call yourself conservative?

Most people in this country are so ignorant you could tell them anything as long as you have a catchy slogan to fool them with.

Let’s face it, the USA is getting really stupid and lazy at a very fast pace.

Another thread said that COrning had just acquired the company and discovered the problem and turned it in to the authorities. So although they owned it they didn’t own it ;~)

Appreciate your post

Thanks for the great background information. My experience with fraudsters is that they are adept at masking anomalies in their story and that Boards can be fooled, especially when the news is good news.

I posted about this yesterday:

Furthermore, in 2007, the Boston Globe (via the Deseret News) reported on Governor Romney's private equity career, including his involvement with a company that had its ethical challenge, Bain Capital's 1989 purchase of Damon Corp., a Needham medical testing firm that later pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government of $25 million and paid a record $119 million fine.

Romney sat on Damon's board. During Romney's tenure, Damon executives submitted bills to the government for millions of unnecessary blood tests. Romney and other board members were never implicated.

More than a decade later, when Romney was in pursuit of the Massachusetts governorship, his Democratic opponent Shannon O'Brien accused him of lax oversight at Damon and failing to report the fraud.

Romney replied that he had helped uncover the illegal activity at Damon, asking the board's lawyers to investigate. As a result, he said, the board took 'corrective action' before selling the company in 1993 to Corning Inc.

But court records suggest that the Damon executives' scheme continued throughout Bain's ownership, and prosecutors credited Corning, not Romney, with cleaning up the situation. Bain, meanwhile, tripled its investment. (Emphasis mine.)

Romney personally reaped $473,000.

Thus, Governor Romney was on the board of a device company, albeit many years prior to when he became a presidential candidate. While he was on the board, the company allegedly committed unethical actions.

Anyone lets a VC near their company gets what they deserve.

You don't pick them. They pick you. They pick not the week and infirm - that turn around stuff is nonsense - but the fat, the profitable, take the prize meat and leave a diseased carcass for the bondholders and taxpayers.

Thanks, but I don’t agree with either one of your statements.

Foolishness and vice have always been there, in all of us. I think the exceptionalism of our country comes from our reverence to God. May it increase.

I’ll stay with my observations.

Another thread said that COrning had just acquired the company and discovered the problem and turned it in to the authorities. So although they owned it they didn’t own it ;~)

Corning owned the company, but Corning didn't own the problem. The fraudulent billing practices were set up when Damon was owned by Bain and Romeny was on the Board.

Corning acquired Damon and stopped the fraudulent billing.

And this was fraud. If the government catches you miscoding, in its agents' opinion, the length of some of your patient encounters, the government may call it fraud.

This case was pure fraud - setting up as system automatically to 'order' tests not ordered by a physician, unbundling tests and billing one component as if it were performed on a day it was not performed to that it could be reimbursed under Medicare rules (if it had been reported as performed on the same day as the other component, Medicare software would have re-bundled them and paid the lower, composite rate). And other, pure, no-doubt, fraudulent practices.

Which Corning didn't start, but Corning stopped.

But court records suggest that the Damon executives' scheme continued throughout Bain's ownership, and prosecutors credited Corning, not Romney, with cleaning up the situation. Bain, meanwhile, tripled its investment.

Yes, it stopped during Corning's ownership.

To be fair, the whole picture isn't that clear.

First, you should know that Corning doesn't have a perfectly clean record. Corning's lab subsidiaries MetPath and Metwest paid a $39.8 million dollar fine in 1993 for unnecessary blood tests. Corning paid $8.6 million in 1995 for its own lab and tests that doctors never ordered. Corning owned Quest Diagnostics, which paid $6.8 million the same year for tests doctors never ordered (yeah, *that* Quest, which Corning spun off into a private company). So Corning had some experience with fraud itself.

Damon lost money for three years after being purchased by Bain, due to payments on the debt Bain used for the LBO. But it made $18 million the next year, then Corning bought them.

And I'm almost certain Corning didn't self-report this (I need to go to my office and pull some binders from Fraud and Abuse seminars during this period - this case was covered at several seminars I attended) and clean it up. Damon was caught. That's when Corning cleaned it up.

So let's not paint Corning as completely the good guy in this.

But court records suggest that the Damon executives' scheme continued throughout Bain's ownership, and prosecutors credited Corning, not Romney, with cleaning up the situation. Bain, meanwhile, tripled its investment.

Yes, it stopped during Corning's ownership.

To be fair, the whole picture isn't that clear.

First, you should know that Corning doesn't have a perfectly clean record. Corning's lab subsidiaries MetPath and Metwest paid a $39.8 million dollar fine in 1993 for unnecessary blood tests. Corning paid $8.6 million in 1995 for its own lab and tests that doctors never ordered. Corning owned Quest Diagnostics, which paid $6.8 million the same year for tests doctors never ordered (yeah, *that* Quest, which Corning spun off into a private company). So Corning had some experience with fraud itself.

Damon lost money for three years after being purchased by Bain, due to payments on the debt Bain used for the LBO. But it made $18 million the next year, then Corning bought them.

And I'm almost certain Corning didn't self-report this (I need to go to my office and pull some binders from Fraud and Abuse seminars during this period - this case was covered at several seminars I attended) and clean it up. Damon was caught. That's when Corning cleaned it up.

So let's not paint Corning as completely the good guy in this.

*

Thanks for your professional insight into this issue. Do you think any of this implicates Romney?