Dianne should look good in stripes...
Posted on 06/04/2007 7:00:59 PM PDT by Libloather
Husband's investments entangle Feinstein
LATEST FLAP OVER MEDICARE PAYMENT DENIALS
By David Whitney
McClatchy Newspapers
Article Launched: 05/19/2007 01:36:54 AM PDT
WASHINGTON - California lawmakers are questioning whether an auditing company in which San Francisco investor Richard Blum, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has a major financial stake is rejecting Medicare claims at California rehabilitation hospitals in order to reap millions of dollars in profits at the expense of patient care.
The company, PRG-Schultz International, has a contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the overseer of the Medicare program, to check payments in California for mistakes. Its only pay is a bounty of up to 30 percent on the "overcharges" it identifies.
The California Hospital Association first raised concerns in November that PRG-Schultz was targeting rehabilitation hospitals that cared for Medicare patients after knee or hip replacement surgery. The hospital association said PRG-Schultz has reviewed thousands of cases dating as far back as 2002 and has rejected nearly all as medically unnecessary.
Melinda Staveley, president of the 38-bed Rehabilitation Institute at Santa Barbara, said more than 100 such cases from her non-profit institution had been rejected. The facility could face having to repay more than $2 million.
Elderly patients
As difficult as that would be financially for a small hospital with a $12 million annual budget, she said the bigger concern is future patient care. The frail and elderly surgery patients with compound medical problems no longer will have access to rehabilitation hospitals and will have to rely on home or outpatient services.
"This is devastating," Staveley said of the audits.
Her husband's business interests in PRG-Schultz have proved awkward for Feinstein, the state's Democratic senior senator, as the hospital association turns to Congress for relief.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
I don’t know about the ‘looking good’ part...but she should be in stripes. Maybe she could make the new license plate I have been hankering for.
I know Melinda Staveley personally, as her grand-daughter and my daughter played soccer on the same team last year. If she says that these cases were rejected unreasonably I believe her. Just thought the Freepers would like to know. If it puts Feinswein’s hub in jail for his crimes, so much the better.
I know Melinda Staveley personally, as her grand-daughter and my daughter played soccer on the same team last year. If she says that these cases were rejected unreasonably I believe her. Just thought the Freepers would like to know. If it puts Feinswein’s hub in jail for his crimes, so much the better.
I'm gonna bring my checkbook on the day that the DOJ auctions off this little bungalow.I figure I should be able to get it for about $100K and fit about fifty Section 8 recipients in it.
Oh dear, they need that money for their new house.
That 30% bounty seems like an insurmountable conflict of interest for any firm. Who monitors the monitors?
Democrat culture of corruption BUMP.
Now, now, I remember when she bought that house. She said they needed it for the children and that at their other place there were people out front smoking and stuff.
She can always go on Air America and plead her case on a radio network that was built with money literally stolen from orphans and Alzheimer's patients.
-PJ
Ouch! You just nailed that sactimonious fat fraud. Hard!
It’s no big deal, she’s a liberal Democrat. I’m sure she did it for the kids. :)
B@stards! Stripes? I'd like to see them in the town square in stocks. Today has not been a very uplifting day for news.
Yes, insurance intermediaries are there in the Temple changing money and ripping people off ... with Mr. Feinstein there at the front table. Who knew???
I wonder if that mansion has one of those big sub zero freezers?
Is any other outlet carrying this story? I had to hear Savage to get the one about all her plum, er Blum, contract work done for DOD.
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