I think if you can't see the difference there, you have a problem that I won't solve by arguing with you.
The Tennessean
By BILL LEWIS, Staff Writer
December 19, 2002
Attorneys for the whistle-blowers who accused HCA Inc. of Medicare fraud say they were within weeks of taking testimony from HCA co-founder Tommy Frist Jr. and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jack Bovender Jr. when the company agreed to a final settlement.
Nashville-based HCA announced an agreement with the Justice Department yesterday to pay another $631 million to settle all remaining charges that it submitted false Medicare claims, paid kickbacks to doctors and over-charged at wound-care centers at its hospitals. The company also will pay $250 million to resolve questions about unprocessed expense claims it submitted from 1993 to 2001.
If the settlement is approved, HCA will have agreed to pay more than $1.7 billion since 2000 to settle all charges against it. It will also pay a total of $17.5 million to states that claimed their Medicaid programs were overcharged. Tennessee will collect an undetermined portion of that money after a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe is completed, bureau spokeswoman Jeanne Broadwell said.
Before the settlement was reached between HCA and the Justice Department, whistle-blower attorneys were preparing to come to Nashville to depose Bovender and Frist in January and February. They were here earlier this month interviewing other executives and wanted to ask HCA's leaders what they knew about the falsified Medicare bills the company was accused of submitting to the federal government.
HCA, the attorneys suggested, tossed in the towel to avoid the spectacle of Frist, a physician and an icon in the Nashville business community, being questioned about the former business practices of the company. He founded what is now HCA in 1968 with his father, Dr. Thomas Frist Sr., and businessman Jack Massey, both deceased.
Many of the questions, and the executives' answers, eventually would make their way into public court records, the lawyers observed.
''I speculate Bovender and Frist didn't want to be put under oath to explain what they knew (about) the worms under the rocks that were being uncovered,'' said Stephen Meagher, a San Francisco attorney with a firm that represented two whistle-blowers.
HCA spokesman Jeff Prescott said the company agreed to settle because it was ''comfortable'' with the amount it would have to pay.
''It was about the numbers,'' he said.
Peter Chatfield, another of the team of 40 private attorneys who said they worked more than 75,000 hours and spent about $30 million pursuing the company, said testimony shows illegal behavior started before HCA was acquired and merged into Columbia/HCA in 1993. Whistle-blowers, by law, can collect up to 25% of the money the government recovered in the case.
The combined company was led by Richard Scott, who was ousted in 1997 after federal investigators raided 19 hospitals and offices. The board brought back Frist and Bovender to restore the company's luster. They fired executives and instituted ethics guidelines, among other changes.
Scott's hard-charging leadership is blamed for many of the company's problems, but the whistle-blower attorneys wanted to ask about earlier business practices. One lawsuit over false Medicare claims, they noted, was filed in January 1993, 10 months before Scott's Columbia bought Hospital Corp. of America, as HCA was then known.
''The notion that Rick Scott is the lone-wolf bad guy is incorrect,'' Chatfield said.
In a statement, Bovender said the company is stronger.
''Today we are a stronger company with a corporate integrity agreement, a corporate compliance initiative that has set the standard for many in our industry and a culture that is focused on the delivery of quality patient care in the communities we serve,'' he said.
Wall Street welcomed details of a final settlement. Shares of HCA closed yesterday at $42.90, up $1.39.
The settlement still must win approval of senior government officials, a powerful senator with a reputation for championing whistle-blowers and the whistle-blowers themselves.
None of that can be taken for granted.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, who sponsored 1986 amendments that strengthened the federal False Claims Act, also known as the whistle-blower law, delayed a settlement last month between HCA and the government that he thought was too favorable to the company.
The Iowa Republican is reviewing the latest settlement.
''The most important question is unanswered. That's whether the taxpayers will get their money back from any fraud perpetrated by HCA,'' said Grassley, the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. ''This settlement can't be a Christmas gift to HCA and a lump of coal for the taxpayers.''
The whistle-blowers also can object and ask a court to block the settlement. If that happened, the case would resume, Chatfield said.
The family background seems to indicate that he's qualified to be the Senate Majority leader. I mean, this is normal, right?