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” ... TennCare, and the program quickly became the financial and criminal equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta ... “

from WorldNetDaily, 2000-Sep-19, by Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays:

Secret test site for Hillary’s plan

A lifelong Democrat, Wallace quickly switched his allegiance to the Republican Party with great fanfare. Although he kept close contact with many of his Democratic buddies, such as Gore, he began ingratiating himself with members of the Sundquist administration.

Early in the Clinton administration, while Hillary Clinton was unsuccessfully attempting to cobble together a nationwide health-care system, then-Gov. McWherter contacted Bill Clinton and Gore and volunteered Tennessee as a test site for Hillary’s health plan.

About 1.1 million poor and uninsured people were enrolled in the program. The federal government allowed Medicaid dollars to be diverted into TennCare, and the program quickly became the financial and criminal equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta.

Despite the fact that the state contributed more than 25 percent of its annual budget to the program, TennCare was still under-funded.

“We couldn’t get the big guys (insurance companies) in. We got the fly-by-nights,” said a federal prosecutor who has tried a number of TennCare fraud cases. “Many of these insurance companies who joined TennCare were just fronts for legislators, their families and other public officials who raked in money while the poor were denied services to which they were legally entitled.”

The program was a revolving door for administrators, eight in only six years, and now threatens to bankrupt the state.

Wallace established a health-care fraud unit, which many TBI agents described as a joke. Even so, some members of the unit were aggressive and vigorously pursued those who bilked TennCare.

According to TBI agents and federal prosecutors, OmniCare, a health insurance company closely allied with the politically potent Ford family of Memphis, was one of the most scandal-ridden of the 12 managed-care organizations participating in TennCare.

In 1995, TBI agents arrested a Nashville woman who admitted forging more than 140 applications for TennCare while working as an independent contractor for OmniCare. Pamela Renee King said she obtained the data contained on the false applications while working as a fitness consultant in the health center at the sprawling Saturn automobile plant in Spring Hill, Tenn.

TBI investigator Shana Roberts said King was paid between $13 and $17 for each application. As long as the scam went undisclosed, OmniCare received $111 per patient per month for patients who didn’t exist or who were fraudulently enrolled in the program.

King was the second OmniCare representative to be caught by TBI agents in 1995. Harold McGhee, a former employee at the Shelby County Corrections Center, admitted to agents he had enrolled 202 inmates that he knew already had medical coverage and were therefore ineligible for TennCare.

Both King and McGhee were convicted of mail fraud and making false statements. Each received a sentence of about a year in prison.