FBI raid shutters Medicare insurer (WellCare - formerly owned by George Soros)

St. Petersburg Times ^ | 10/25/07 | Kris Hundley

[wagglebee]

For the past two years, analysts have been asking how fast-growing WellCare Health Plans of Tampa has been able to make so much money running government health plans for the poor and elderly. Now government investigators may be asking the same thing.

On a rainy Wednesday morning, more than 200 federal and state agents swarmed WellCare's campus on Henderson Road in Tampa, forcing employees onto the sidewalk and into their cars.

Steven Meitzen, 51, who arrived at WellCare about 9:40 a.m. for a job interview, said he was initially told it was a bomb scare. "Later on, I talked to someone who said the FBI had a subpoena and were looking for records," he said.

By midday, the complex's parking garages were half-empty, but federal agents remained busy. They were still milling around WellCare's buildings in the early evening; a Ryder truck was backed up to a loading dock.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa said little about the search, which involved personnel from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Florida attorney general's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. The search warrant is sealed.

Both federal and state officials, however, said that the investigation should have no impact on delivery of health care to the more than 2.3-million members of WellCare's managed care plans.

The company's customers are about evenly divided between Medicare and Medicaid plans. WellCare is the largest Medicaid provider in Florida, with more than 350,000 members. The company also offers Medicare Advantage plans to seniors in seven states and a stand-alone drug plan nationwide.

The timing of the raid could be detrimental as WellCare is in the midst of convincing seniors to sign up for its 2008 plans.

WellCare issued a release saying that it was cooperating with authorities and that essential services to members would remain uninterrupted. Though its customer service number was working Wednesday, WellCare's Web site was replaced with a notice saying, "We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly."

The company, which went public in July 2004 at $17 a share, has had a meteoric rise, with its stock more than doubling in the past 12 months. On Wednesday, WellCare's shares dropped $6.77 or 5.5 percent, to $115.50 before trading was halted about 11 a.m. It ended the day down $7.10 at $115.17.

FTN Midwest analyst Peter Costa downgraded his rating on WellCare stock to "sell" from "neutral" on Wednesday, citing the search. Costa said the investigation appeared to be a criminal one.

"Criminal investigations are harder to prove, likely to be more company specific and carry stiffer penalties, including being barred from doing business with the government if it is for fraud, which it most likely is given the departments involved," Costa said in a research note.

Thomas Carroll, analyst with Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore, called the raid "ominous" and downgraded WellCare shares to "sell" from "hold" in a note to clients. Contacts within the company said BlackBerries, computers and files were seized from corporate, marketing and human resources offices, according to Carroll.

Carroll suspects the raid is potentially the result of a lawsuit in which an employee brought a matter to the attention of authorities.

"When the FBI and HHS raid a health care company, the outlook on earnings, legal proceedings and the entire operations of the company can be questioned," Carroll said.

WellCare's business practices have come under increased criticism over the past several months. Last spring, the company said independent sales agents in Georgia enrolled dead people in Medicare plans. In May and June, WellCare representatives appeared along with other insurance executives at hearings in the Senate and House into aggressive Medicare marketing practices. WellCare and six other insurers subsequently agreed to a temporary halt in marketing one type of Medicare plan, while promising to initiate consumer safeguards. In August, however, Medicare cited WellCare once again for violating several provisions of its Medicare contract, including sales practices.

WellCare, which had earnings of $139.2-million in 2006, gets all of its nearly $4-billion in revenues from state or federal governments. Profits come from the difference between the amount received from the government and the amount spent on overhead and medical care for its members.

The company routinely has outperformed its competition; for the quarter ending in June, the company said just 80.8 percent of its revenue was spent on medical claims, down from 82.7 percent a year ago.

WellCare's high margins have had analysts scratching their heads. In April, two Wall Street analysts said Florida in particular was too generous in its Medicaid reimbursement to WellCare. The analysts, with CIBC World Markets and Goldman Sachs & Co., were particularly critical of WellCare's use of a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands for reinsurance, saying it allowed the company to shift money in the form of reinsurance premiums.

WellCare said its reinsurance arrangement had been approved by stateregulators and rejected claims it was overpaid.

Florida Medicaid payments were raised 7.5 percent in July, to an average of $215 per member per month. Cuts of about 1.5 percent could be on the way in January, however, if Gov. Charlie Crist approves recommendations made during the recent special legislative session.

Medicare reimbursements average about $800 per member per month and will increase 3.5 percent next year. Because the federal government wanted to encourage private insurers to offer Medicare plans, it pays about 12 percent more for seniors on private plans than it does for traditional Medicare.

WellCare was a slow-growing Florida company until 1992 when its owner, Dr. Kiran Patel, sold it to a New York investment group led by financier George Soros. The bankers hired Todd Farha, an aggressive Harvard MBA, to transform the company. Under his leadership, WellCare's earnings have increased eight-fold and the company's investors and executives like Farha have profited handsomely from appreciation in its stock.

In an interview last year, Farha credited WellCare's success with hard work, attractive member benefits and close attention to the basics. But he has also nurtured the kinds of relationships invaluable to a company dependent on government funding.

WellCare and its affiliates have given the Republican Party of Florida some $105,000 in contributions this year, according to state election records. They've also given the Florida Democratic Party $5,000 this year. In 2006, WellCare's PAC gave $66,000 to federal candidates, all Republicans.

And the company's board has included the head of the Florida agency that oversees Medicaid, Dr. Andrew Agwunobi. Agwunobi was a director for six months before being picked to head the Agency for Health Care Administration. For his six months service on WellCare's board, Agwunobi received stock, which he sold for more than $1-million.

Current WellCare board members include former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and Ruben King-Shaw, former head of Florida's health agency and an ex-deputy chief at Medicare.

[8mmMauser]

Since that all happened in parallel to Easter and Holy Week, I get confused as to the characters. Which one was it on that scene who was supposedly sympathetic and at the last moment washed his hands and let the killers have their way. It was either Pontius Pilate or Jeb. I get them confused.

[8mmMauser]

Fred and Terri tar baby dailies...

They just don't MoveOn.

This modest excerpt is from the LA Times. No, it isn't just about Romney and the Obama Nation. (Osama Nation wouldn't sound right.)

.................................

You may recall, candidate Fred Thompson was asked a few weeks ago about the highly controversial Terri Schiavo right-to-die case from two years ago in which the husband of a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state wanted to remove her feeding tube. Her parents went to court and Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and other politicians got into the struggle.

Thompson said he didn't really recall much about the case, and some people clucked and said, How could he not? Well, Thompson was talking with some reporters last week and, it turns out, he remembers it too well. He just didn't want to talk about it: Like a growing number of Americans, he had gone through a similar end-of-life decision -- regarding his daughter five years ago................................

He knew about Schiavo

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Fred and Terri take two.

Are my eyes deceiving me? This extract is from a site named freep.com. Are they all FReepers? I think not, they are from Detroit Free Press. How novel.

...........................

Obviously I knew about the (Terri) Schiavo case. I had to face a situation like that in my own personal life with my own daughter. ... And I will assure you one thing: No matter which decision you make, you will never know whether or not you made exactly the right decision.

Fred Thompson, Republican presidential candidate, in the New York Times

A choice with lifelong doubts

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Bringing Death to life, a unique way of viewing it, I suppose, in a thread by wagglebee.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jack Kevorkian, the advocate of doctor-assisted suicide who spent eight years in prison for second-degree murder, is cooperating with HBO Films for a movie about his controversial practices.

Kevorkian, now 79, assisted in at least 130 suicides and beat the state court system in Michigan numerous times, but he was convicted in 1999 after he willingly sent a videotape of himself euthanizing a terminally ill man to CBS' "60 Minutes."

He received a 10- to 25-year sentence for second-degree murder -- serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison in Michigan -- but was paroled in June.

Kevorkian helps bring HBO movie to life

8mm

[8mmMauser]

And here I always thought that Margaret Sanger was more than the past tense of Peter Singer, and was actually Hitler's father. Thread on morph by Diago.

...............................

A reader e-mailed us today urging that the Margaret Sanger Adolph Hitler Morph be entered into the Margaret Sanger at the Ku Klux Klan Rally Art Contest.

Not Gonna Do It! Margaret Sanger & Hilter Morph Banned from Art Contest

8mm

[8mmMauser]

In wishes and dreams for the Supreme Court, I would wish they be Ruth-less in viewing Roe vs Wade

For example, the left is furious with George Bush for (among other things) reinstating the "Mexico City Policy," first instituted by Ronald Reagan, that makes the receipt of federal funds by non-governmental organizations conditional upon their agreeing that they will "neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations." It is bizarre how the left can howl about how inhumane it is to use the interrogation technique of "waterboarding" (which does no lasting physical harm) to extract information from terrorists, but they are just fine and dandy with death by dismemberment of unborn babies in the womb.

Did Progress Begin with Roe v. Wade?

8mm

[8mmMauser]

A follow on to this topic in a thread by wagglebee is this: Mothers who have had abortions previously and faced with handicapped children as a result are the worst mix I can imagine for continuation of the evil consequences commenced with the first killing.

VANCOUVER, Canada, October 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An article appearing in this month’s edition of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine concludes that nearly 32 per cent of “very-preterm” U.S. births, that is, before 32 weeks gestation, are due to the mother having had a prior abortion. This information, combined with previous research in the relation between low birth weight children and cerebral palsy (CP), results in an estimated 1,096 children suffering from CP because of their mother’s prior abortion.

Study: Previous Abortions Linked With Pre-Term Birth and Cerebral Palsy

8mm

[mdmathis6]

“But I’m not dead yet...I’m getting better!”(Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”)

[floriduh voter]

People we have never met should NEVER be killed by judicial activism or a flawed government based upon "our personal life experiences". That's a total cop-out.

Fred's daughter was bi-polar, Terri wasn't. Fred's daughter overdosed. Terri did not.

Fred's daughter wasn't starved and dehydrated to death by Judge George Greer and the other men in black robes who are thick as thieves with the blind sheik Greer, his cronies who include the Pinellas GOP, Pinellas State Attorney Bernie McCabe, the right to die bloodthirsty lawyers, the aclu, the atheists of Florida, by our current Governor Charlie Crist and those famous brothers! The list is longer than that but I'm trying to keep this short.

www.judgegeorgegreer.com and www.michaelschiavo.org

[floriduh voter]

It was Jeb Bush. Doesn't he look tough here? He let Jesse do the talking on CNN. Jesse said, "Her death will save millions of lives."

I saw this on tv. I was ill the day before Terri died and watched the news instead of going to Hostage Woodside. I saw this pictured event "live". Jeb's mission accomplished. Terri was almost dead and then, so was Pope John Paul II who begged Jeb to rescue Terri. Lucky for Jeb that Pope John Paul died.

President Bush appointed Jeb Bush to represent all Americans at Pope Benedict's investiture. He certainly wasn't representing me!

Maybe Benedict forgave Jebediah for his sins. Then Jeb breakfasted with the Semblers in Rome and the Semblers who run all RINO campaigns including the RNC, the Bushes, Greer and Crist won one for the right to die movement.

For the love of money!

[floriduh voter]

(Alan Keyes was snubbed and he had documentation proving Jeb had the authority to save Terri. He was snubbed but Jesse Jackson was used as Jeb's mouthpiece on that particular Wednesday. Jeb, we hardly knew ye.)

It's at cnn. It's what happened the day before Terri died. How tough, whatta big man abandoning an innocent woman! Then making Jesse do the talking. Jeb = UNELECTABLE. Jeb = coward.

[floriduh voter]

Hopefully, Anderson Cooper will bring up Terri. He has lots of insider information and if he’s really a pioneer at CNN, he’ll spill some beans on the St. Petersburg, FL stage.

[8mmMauser]

Fred and Terri tar baby dailies....

Again and again, they appear. Poor Fred in his last sentence hopes this will go away, as that phrase is repeated again and again. It is stuck on him just as wetoldjaso. He may not ever understand just how important it was to defend the life of this innocent, but the media will assure it is in his face anyway.

.......................................

You may recall, candidate Fred Thompson was asked a few weeks ago about the highly controversial Terri Schiavo right-to-die case from two years ago in which the husband of a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state wanted to remove her feeding tube. Her parents went to court and Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and other politicians got into the struggle.

Thompson said he didn't really recall much about the case, and some people clucked and said, How could he not? Well, Thompson was talking with some reporters last week and, it turns out, he remembers it too well. He just didn't want to talk about it: Like a growing number of Americans, he had gone through a similar end-of-life decision -- regarding his daughter five years ago.

~Snip~

Then he added, "I will assure you one thing: No matter which decision you make, you will never know whether or not you made exactly the right decision. So making this into a political football is something that I don't welcome. And this will probably be the last time I ever address it."

Romney names new terrorist leader... template_bas template_bas Also, Chuck endorses Mike, Storm Lake likes Joe, Ellen disses John, Specter surprises and Fred knew too well about Schiavo.

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Who would have thought up this amazingly novel concept. It is so simple no wonder it wasn't considered before.

Don't make murder a crime!

Wow!

Consider this X00 guy. And no, it didn't come from the Margaret Sanger Gazette, or the Auschwitz Express, but from a mainstream publication.

......................................

FORMER Beckley minister George Exoo — who consoled an Irish woman while she quietly took her life with sleep-inducing pills and helium — cannot be extradited to Ireland to face a possible 14 years in prison, a U.S. magistrate ruled Friday. The offbeat Unitarian preacher was freed from jail, where he had been held since June.

Hurrah. This development may be one more small step toward securing the legal right of desperate people to end their lives, when their pain and torment become too severe.

Of course, it’s impossible to stop determined folks from committing suicide by themselves, when they willfully desire it. But conservative lawmakers and fundamentalist groups endlessly try to punish anyone who aids their right to die.

Jack Kevorkian, an eccentric known as “Dr. Death,” spent eight years in a Michigan prison for murder because he helped a Lou Gehrig’s disease victim end his hopeless life. When the physician was released four months ago, the Catholic Diocese of Detroit branded him a “pathological serial killer.”

Oregon passed a 1997 “Death With Dignity” law that lets doctors prescribe lethal doses of sleeping pills for terminal, miserable patients. About 300 dying Oregonians have used it, so far. The Bush administration, backed by white evangelicals, fought the law to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Oregon last year. Only far-right justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and John Roberts voted to criminalize physician help.

The grotesque Terri Schiavo case, in which Republican congressmen rushed into emergency session to continue life-support machines sustaining a brain-dead woman, spotlighted the thorny topic.

The right to die isn’t a simple issue. But it’s one that must be faced, as more Americans live to advanced age and many suffer terminal agonies of cancer, etc. Solving this dilemma won’t be helped by throwing doctors and ministers into prison cells.

We hope last week’s liberation of the Rev. Exoo adds a bit more legal support for the principle that desperate, dying people have a right to take control of their final days, and to enter the unknown without pain.

Right to die... # Don't criminalize it

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Audry Ignatoff is a powerful advocate on our side for Terri. She writes in Alan Keyes' RenewAmerica about some ironies rusting in the left.

According to a Rider alumnus, a different student commonly made even stronger racial comments, as well as anti-semetic remarks. Matthew Volker, who graduated in May, 2007, repeatedly made statements about Blacks, calling them the "N" word, among others, such as "porch monkey," "shinebox," "reggins," and, "mau maus." He also made comments against Jews, calling them "Kikes." He stated that "Hitler was a great man," "The Jews were taking everyone's money and ruining the economy," and, "The collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 was because of the Jews." He also stated, "The Holocaust was a good thing, and that we need a final solution." Volker is a self proclaimed Nazi, and an admirer of Adolph Hitler.

Students who heard these remarks did not report his behavior, and in fact, some were quite upset when one student did make a report to Campus Security. The university president, who is a descendent of the Holocaust, was so upset, that he forwarded the report to the Lawrence Township Police Department. Ethan Lefkowitz, class of 2006, reported the incidents, and also said that Volker's remarks became increasingly hostile and were also aimed at him on the computer and the phone, as well as in person. In addition to making remarks about Blacks and Jews, he proceeded to make derogatory personal comments as well. Ethan is a member of the Jewish Community and a resident of Mercer County, New Jersey. He fears that these types of statements may damage his personal and professional credibility among students and alumni........................

Racism, anti-semitism is alive at Rider University

8mm

[8mmMauser]

OOPS! Audrey, not Audry. Sorry, Audrey.

[8mmMauser]

Bella, worth checking out! Thread on the film by wagglebee.

.......................................

Bella, an independent film staring Mexican superstar Eduardo Verástegui, is scheduled for limited release in theatres on October 26. The movie, an inspirational drama set in modern-day New York, has what America's been asking for but what Hollywood refuses to give.

Having won the People's Choice Award at last year's Toronto Film Festival, you'd think major Hollywood distribution companies would be crawling over one another for a crack at the film. But such is not the case. Bella's central theme puts a premium on the value of human life - including life in the womb - and that is a value Hollywood just won't tolerate.

Just as the Hollywood left scoffed at The Passion of the Christ, it has largely ignored the award winning Bella. The movie's life-affirming message just doesn't comport with Tinseltown's narrow leftist agenda.

Bella the Movie: Next Passion of the Christ?

8mm

[8mmMauser]

The view of our founder!

Thanks, wagglebee, for the ping.

The purpose of Free Republic is to fight for our freedom, for the constitution, for conservatism and for our traditional American heritage. We recognize that the domestic enemy of freedom is liberalism and big government socialism.

We recognize that our unalienable rights come from God not man or government and, no, they are NOT open to debate or subject to negotiation or compromise.

Sorry, RINOS, but the right to Life is our first unalienable right. This is not just a conservative political "principle" that stubborn right wing fringe nuts refuse to give up. It's an UNALIENABLE right granted to all men by GOD and no man or government can deprive us of same! Not without one hell of a fight!! Compromisers be damned!!

The Right to Life is an UNALIENABLE right granted to us by God

8mm

[8mmMauser]

I posted on a new tribute to T'wit.

T'wit, FReeper extraordinaire, has died.

8mm

[floriduh voter]

Terri November Dailies.

Terri makes the New York Times. Of course the fail to mention that's she's deceased. They also mistakenly said she was on life support. Feeding tubes are NOT life support.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/magazine/28Evangelicals-t.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5065&en=4c6dbb47b517e1c6&ex=1194235200&partner=MYWAY