Nurse to feds: State grants went to politicians’ campaigns

‘Thousands of dollars” in state grants awarded to bolster health care in minority communities instead went to pay campaign workers for former state Sen. Rickey Hendon and Democratic candidates Hendon supported, a Chicago nurse has told investigators.

The nurse, Tonja Cook, 44, detailed her allegations in four interviews with state and federal authorities between October 2010 and May 2011, records show.

In June 2011, federal prosecutors in Springfield charged Cook and another Chicago nurse, Margaret A. Davis, with siphoning $500,000 from state grant funds for Davis’ “personal use.”

Hendon, 58, a West Side Democrat who unexpectedly retired from the Senate in February 2011, hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing.

But the former legislator and 27th Ward alderman — nicknamed “Hollywood” for his entertainment-industry career aspirations — is named in reports the investigators wrote after their interviews with Cook.

.........[”Hollywood”] Hendon once called himself the black Sarah Palin, a reference, he said, to his African-American grassroots support.

Hendon had been a candidate in the race to become Chicago’s mayor, but he dropped out in November. He denied the controversies had anything to do with his decision to leave the race, citing the need for the African-American community to rally around a single candidate.

“The community would always think he was trying to look out...and provide some assistance in terms of funding for different programs and helping their churches, and so most people would see he did a fairly decent job,” said Alderman Emma Mitts, 37th Ward.

But not everyone agrees.

AmySue Mertens lost a primary race to Hendon in 2008.

“The people in the area where they needed it the most were not seeing the benefits of those funds,” said Mertens.

Last year, Hendon came out with a book entitled “Backstabbers” about the perils of political office. After declining an interview request with ABC7, he said he was coming out with another book called “Backstabbers II.”

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/politics&id=7978032

May 16, 2012 - Michelle Malkin:.....”I warned two months ago that the ObamaCare Innovation Center and its multibillion-dollar slush fund smacked of “another pipeline for political payoffs and Chicago-style boodle that will result in less patient autonomy, fewer health-care choices, more government intrusion and lower-quality care.”

The University of Chicago Medical Center grant walks and talks like just such a political payoff. I have reported extensively on how Mrs. Obama helped engineer the Urban Health Initiative’s plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. With consulting help from Obama senior adviser David Axelrod’s Chicago-based PR firm and the blessing of fellow Chicago pal Valerie Jarrett (who chaired the hospital’s board of trustees), Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents.”

The program guaranteed “free” shuttle rides to and from the outside clinics. In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged by a nonprofit, tax-exempt hospital as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients.

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted MichelleObamaCare, expressing “grave concerns that the University of Chicago’s policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to ‘patient dumping.’” The group concluded that the Urban Health Initiative “reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.” That practice was made illegal by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) signed by President Ronald Reagan.

Bipartisan complaints about impoverished South Side Chicago patients getting the shaft led GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago to challenge the crony hospital’s abuse of its nonprofit status and lucrative tax breaks. But the probe went nowhere.”...

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=1598800

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