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posted on above thread:

Mrs. Obama was involved in dumping low income patients without severely traumatic injuries to nearby hospitals in buses, against the law. She was aided by David Axelrod .. who formed a company for this new business venture .. and Dr. Eric Whitaker, another O bud.

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Michelle Obama’s Patient-Dumping Scheme

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The First Lady helped create a notorious program that dumped poor patients on community hospitals, yet the national media ignore the story. Imagine if her husband were a Republican.

The University of Chicago Medical Center has received a good deal of justly opprobrious press over its policy of “redirecting” low-income patients to community hospitals while reserving its own beds for well-heeled patients requiring highly profitable procedures.

Substantial coverage was given to a recent indictment of the program by the American College of Emergency Physicians. ACEP’s president, Dr. Nick Jouriles, released a statement suggesting that the initiative comes “dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act, and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.”

Oddly absent from most of the unflattering press coverage of UCMC’s patient-dumping scheme is any mention of the role our new First Lady played in devising the program. A laudable exception has been the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported last August that “Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program.”

On the rare occasions when other “news” media have bothered to connect the Urban Health Initiative to its glamorous creator, they have attempted to whitewash this tawdry program. Typical of such disingenuous coverage was a story in the Washington Post, which described it as “an innovative program to steer the patients to existing neighborhood clinics.”

But no amount of journalistic lipstick can hide the reality that Mrs. Obama’s initiative is a patient-dumping scheme. Such “cherry-picking,” as Dr. Jouriles accurately describes it, was, at one time, fairly common.

Prestigious institutions like the University of Chicago Medical Center routinely “dumped” Medicaid, uninsured and other unprofitable patients on less mercenary community hospitals.

Many patients suffered needlessly, and more than a few actually died, as the result of this practice. So, in 1986, President Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA) into law.

EMTALA made such “redirection” illegal, but many high profile hospitals still chafed at being forced to treat poor patients.

Enter Michelle Obama, UCMC’s “Vice President for Community and External Affairs.”

Mrs. Obama first hatched the UCMC program as the “South Side Health Collaborative,” which featured a gang of “counselors” whose job it was to “advise” low-income patients that they would be better off at other hospitals and clinics.

The program was so successful in getting rid of unwanted patients that she expanded it, gave it a new name, and hired none other than David Axelrod to sell the program to the public.

According to the Sun-Times, “Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring.” Axelrod helped the future First Lady formulate a public relations campaign in which the “Urban Health Initiative” was represented as a boon to the community actuated by the purest of altruistic motives.

The resultant PR campaign was a study in Orwellian audacity. Chicago’s inner city residents soon began hearing that UCMC’s patient dumping program would “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents” and that the medical center was generously willing to provide “a ride on a shuttle bus to other centers.”

Likewise, the people who ran the community hospitals to which these unwanted patients were being shuttled began to read claims in local media to the effect that the Urban Health Initiative was good for them as well.

Dr. Eric Whitaker, the Blagojevich crony who succeeded Mrs. Obama as Director of the program, repeatedly assured gullible reporters that the financial impact on these hospitals would be positive: “The initiative actually is improving their bottom lines.” The CFOs of those hospitals were no doubt relieved to learn that treating Medicaid and uninsured patients is profitable.

But you just can’t please some people. In one of the few frank passages of the Post article, we discover that many members of UCMC’s medical staff believe the program is nothing more than an “attempt to ensure that the hospital retains only affluent patients with insurance.”

And another association of emergency physicians has joined ACEP in denouncing the Urban Health Initiative. The Chicago Tribune reports that Dr. Larry Weiss, president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine is unhappy about UCMC’s failure to consult its own ER physicians before initiating the program: “Not including emergency-room physicians ... would be analogous to changing the way surgery is performed in an operating room without involving any surgeons.” Dr. Whitaker assures us, however, that such critics are merely “opposed to change.”

Presumably, he would be similarly dismissive of Angela Adams, who brought her son to the medical center’s ER after his lip had been partially torn off by a pit bull.

As the Tribune puts it, “Instead of rushing Dontae into surgery ... the hospital’s staff began pressing her about insurance.” Unfortunately for Dontae, he was covered by Medicaid. So, all he got from the UCMC emergency department was a shot, some antibiotics, and instructions to “follow up with Cook County.”

Angela had to take her son across town to John Stroger Hospital, where he was immediately admitted for reconstructive surgery. Like doctors Jouriles and Weiss, Angela is having trouble seeing the community benefit of the Urban Health Initiative.

Meanwhile, the program’s parents, Michelle Obama and David Axelrod, have moved to Washington. As the First Lady and the President’s closest advisor, they wield enormous power.

Indeed, they may be the most powerful people in the Obama Administration, aside from the President himself. If these two characters were willing to betray their Chicago neighbors — the South Side’s most vulnerable citizens — with a disgraceful program like the Urban Health Initiative, what sort of mischief will they devise for the hapless denizens of flyover country?

Come to think of it, isn’t Obamacare being sold to us in pretty much the same way the Urban Health Initiative was sold to Chicago?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/michelle_obamas_patientdumping_1.html

American Hero - Anita Moncrief, Whistleblower - former ACORN operative is sued!

FROM: (more at link)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2275653/posts?page=1

Anita made the following statements (basis or basis set forth in parenthesis at end):

1. Project Vote has violated its 501(c)(3) status by using government and private grants that ultimately go directly or indirectly to ACORN (based on direct knowledge).

2. ACORN, Project Vote and Citizens Services Inc. (CSI) are essentially the same organization with different tax designations that are used to facilitate the transfer of money between them (based on direct and indirect knowledge).

3. ACORN has promoted a culture of dishonesty motivated by reaching target Voter Registration goals and senior staff have portrayed an attitude that allows for some “bad” cards in order to reach these goals (based on direct and indirect knowledge).

4. Karyn Gillette, Project Vote Development Director, Jeff Robinson, senior Project Vote “money man” and Nathan Henderson James, Project Vote Research and Political Director are all employed by CSI and may have worked directly with anyone seeking the services of CSI and money paid to CSI would have obvious ACORN ties (based on direct and indirect knowledge and documents).

5. Zach Polett, former Executive Director of Project Vote and former director of ACORN Political Operations mentioned that Obama had worked for us and that he even supervised him during a ACORN Political staff retreat in November 2007 (based on direct knowledge).

Obama in the last presidential debate: “My only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.”

That’s a lie, not a fact.

Yes, Obama represented ACORN in that lawsuit and the Clinton Justice Department predictably sided with ACORN.

But that was NOT Obama’s only involvement with ACORN.

And Obama looked into the camera during the last presidential debate and flat out lied to the American people about it (in his calm, seemingly non-threatening manner).

ACORN is the organization with which Obama has been associated throughout his adult life, as organizer, trainer, lawyer, funder and political beneficiary...and Obama’s Achilles heel.

Anita reports revealing connections between ACORN and the Obama campaign based on personal knowledge.

In late 2007, Anita reports, Anita received a call from the Obama campaign asking if this was the same Project Vote that Obama worked for in the 90’s. With the staff retreat fresh in mind, Anita answered yes and sent an email to Zach Polett, Karyn Gillette, Nathan Henderson James, and Kevin Whelan stating that the campaign wanted someone to call them back regarding some media questions that were being asked at the time.

In late 2007, Anita reports, Karyn Gillette approached Anita to tell her that she had direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists. This meeting took place sometime in November of 2007 and may have even been a conference call between the campaign and Project Vote. Anita was given an excel spreadsheet to work with for cultivation of new donors. When Anita had trouble because of the duplicates, Karyn stated that she would contact her person at the campaign and see if they had another one.

Anita reports that Karyn Gillette also provided lists obtained from the Kerry and Clinton campaigns, as well as the 2004 DNC donor lists, and that these lists were shared with the Political directors of roughly 12 ACORN battleground states in order to raise money for a $28 million dollar (number as of 11/2007) voter registration drive (based on direct and indirect knowledge and documents).

Anita reports that research uncovered after the Rathke embezzlement scandal showed that persons demanded a forensic audit and suggested a well-known, credible firm to do it, but Bertha Lewis told them that the auditors came back with a contract that was “too expensive” and that’s what Dale Rathke told funders back when they were hoping Arthur Anderson would take over auditing (based on indirect knowledge and documents).

Anita reports that ACORN and Project Vote used CCI to transfer money between the organizations and may be guilty of violating RICO statues (based on indirect knowledge and documents).

Anita reports that Sidley Austin, Obama’s old law firm, is representing ACORN pro-bono and Mesirow Financial, the firm hired to provide financial advice to ACORN, is headed by a major Obama donor, Richard Mesirow (based on indirect knowledge and documents).

Anita also notes that questions have been raised about the shredding or destruction of documents by ACORN’s own lawyers (based on documents).

Bottom line: ACORN has been improperly coordinating with and operating as an arm of the Obama campaign, and “the Senator from ACORN”’s involvement with ACORN has been much more than his lawful representation of ACORN in the motor voter case years ago.