By Michelle Malkin
Friday, February 15, 2013
Hey, remember when President Obama crusaded against
Medicare fraud and vowed to crack down aggressively on scammers who have bilked
the program out of an estimated $90 billion? As Archie and Edith Bunker used to
sing: Those were the daaaays.
While Democrats pretend to protect the elderly and
disabled, leaders of the People’s Party have pocketed gobs of campaign
contributions from fat-cat donors tied to massive Medicare rip-off schemes.
Let’s talk about Dr. Salomon Melgen, shall we? We now
know that the jet-setting Florida eye doctor who flew the beleaguered Senator
Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) to several alleged sex romps in the Dominican Republic
also overbilled the government by $8.9 million for care at his clinic. That’s
according to Menendez’s own aides. They acknowledged last week that their boss
met with federal health bureaucrats at least twice to lobby on Melgen’s behalf.
“Federal investigators and health-care auditors have had
concerns about Melgen’s billing practices at various times over the past
decade,” according to two former federal officials who spoke to the Washington
Post. “In part, they have examined the volume of eye injections, surgeries and
laser treatments performed at his West Palm Beach clinic.”
Now, brace yourself. A Menendez aide says that when
Senator Sleaze-Bob intervened, he didn’t know nuttin’ about Melgen’s being
under investigation. Just as he didn’t know nuttin’ about his longtime aide’s
working for Melgen’s port-security firm in the Dominican Republic, on whose
behalf Senator Sleaze-Bob also intervened.
And just as he didn’t know nuttin’ about yet another ride
on Melgen’s plane in 2008 (exposed this week by the conservative Daily Caller),
which he forgot to disclose to the Senate.
Senate Democratic leaders have done nuttin’ to prevent
Menendez, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare,
from playing a prominent role in Medicare-reform negotiations while Melgen’s
Medicare-fraud investigation unfolds.
It’s all par for the Democrats’ conflict-of-interest
course, of course. Recently departed Obama health-care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle
raked in millions from her positions on a handful of corporate boards under
fire for various regulatory violations, whistleblower complaints, and Medicare
fraud.
One of the companies for which DeParle served as a
director, kidney-dialysis empire DaVita, has been plagued by whistleblowers’
fraud allegations for nearly 20 years. These include long-standing claims (many
still under investigation or the subject of ongoing litigation) that the
company overused the anemia drug Epogen and billed Medicare for it; submitted
fraudulent Medicare claims for dialysis drugs; and forged kickback schemes
between doctors and joint ventures.
Another Medicare-fraud suspect, the Stryker Corporation,
paid nearly $17 million to settle allegations about false-claims submissions in
2007. Pat Stryker, liberal heiress to the Stryker fortune, is an Obama bundler
and one of the Democratic party’s wealthiest progressives. She was also behind
the now-bankrupt Obama green-energy boondoggle in Colorado, Abound Solar.
While the Obama campaign (aided and abetted by the lapdog
media) viciously smeared Mitt Romney by tying him to Medicare fraud he had
absolutely nothing to do with while he was at Bain Capital, this White House
has escaped any scrutiny of its own ties to accused Medicare scammers. Instead,
the administration was happy to powwow with Menendez and other Democratic
leaders on policy strategy this week.
What did they have to say about Menendez’s lobbying on
behalf of Medicare exploiter Melgen and the conflict-of-interest cloud
stretching from Capitol Hill to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Nuttin’.
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