Free Republic

[Madison, WI] As tens of thousands of public employees skipped work this week to attend protest rallies outside the Wisconsin State Capitol, many wondered if they would face any disciplinary action for unexcused absences. On Saturday, a group of men and women in lab coats purporting to be doctors were handing out medical excuse notes, without examining the ‘patients.’ “I asked this doctor what he was doing and he told me they were handing out excuses to people who were feeling sick due to emotional, mental or financial distress,” said Christian Hartsock. “They never performed an exam–he asked me how...

[Madison, Wisc...] As Milwaukee Public School teachers left their classrooms to march in Madison Friday, they likely earned more than $3 million to not teach students in Wisconsin’s largest school district. In Madison, the school district was closed for three days after hundreds of teachers engaged in a mass sick-out so they could attend protest rallies at the State Capitol. That could cost the district $2.7 million. Late Sunday night Madison Metropolitan School District administration announced their schools would be shut down yet one more day, at a possible cost of more than $900,000. Many of absent teachers converged on the Capitol to protest...

Doctors from numerous hospitals set up a station near the Capitol to provide notes to explain public employees' absences from work. Family physician Lou Sanner, 59, of Madison, said he had given out hundreds of notes. Many of the people he spoke with seemed to be suffering from stress, he said. "What employers have a right to know is if the patient was assessed by a duly licensed physician about time off of work," Sanner said. "Employers don't have a right to know the nature of that conversation or the nature of that illness. So it's as valid as every...

Re: Lois Capps’ Jan. 9 commentary, “The numbers don’t lie: Healthcare reform law is helping California”: Allowing children with rare diseases to maintain coverage, extending coverage to young adults to age 26, eliminating lifetime coverage caps and pre-existing condition limitations and giving free preventive care certainly sound like good provisions. The “free” mandates in the new healthcare bill are not free, the expansion of coverage comes at a cost which is reflected in premiums. Premiums are escalating out of control at an unsustainable rate. I have renewals for five companies’ group health plans on my desk; the annual rate increases...

On August 20, 2009, a federal grand jury in Miami returned an eleven-count Indictment charging Aloise with health care fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1347. According to the Indictment, Aloise was the owner of Atenas Medical Equipment, Inc., a Hialeah-based company that purportedly provided durable medical equipment (“DME”) to Medicare beneficiaries. From June 8, 2005, through April 4, 2007, Atenas Medical Equipment is alleged to have submitted approximately $1,421,346 in fraudulent claims to Medicare seeking reimbursement for DME items, such as oxygen concentrators and hospital beds, that had not been prescribed by physicians nor provided...

A psychologist raised in Frayser and trained in South America, Morgan had been rejected twice by the state's psychology licensing board because of his academic record. But Morgan found a powerful ally in then-state Sen. John Ford, who pushed through legislation that forced regulators to hand Morgan a license to practice, according to an examination by The Commercial Appeal. That carefully tailored 1998 law has privately troubled psychology professionals for years yet remained unknown to the larger public. The newspaper uncovered the matter following Morgan's indictment last month. Federal prosecutors contend Morgan offered Ford money in 2005 for legislation that...

Jonathan Narvaez-Pena admitted to drinking 10-15 shots of tequila before getting into his Buick Park Avenue and speeding through the streets of Nashville on the night of October 21, 2006. Narvaez-Pena, an uninsured illegal alien with a prior arrest for driving without a license, ran numerous red lights before crashing into the Bumvu family's car. Antoine Bumvu, 43, and his two-year-old son, Eddy, were killed in the accident. Bumvu's wife, Josephine, and his six-month-old son, Tony, were seriously injured and taken to the hospital. Four other vehicles were involved in the crash and a total of 11 victims were taken...

A judge yesterday threw out a claim by a man who, the court heard, used "electric underpants" to give himself fake heart attack symptoms. Marcus Danquah, 41, of Kirton Lindsey, Lincolnshire, had sought up to £300,000 in damages after claiming that a wrongly wired £34.50 Morphy Richards 42400 Comfi Grip iron gave him a heart attack. But the company alleged that he had wired the iron so that it became live and would give an electric shock to anyone who touched it. It also claims that he used the "amps-in-his pants" device in his underwear to create false reading on...

He's given hundreds of flu shots over the past few months, but health officials say he isn't a doctor and they still don't know exactly what he's been injecting. It's a story you saw First on News 3. Shahid Shiekh is under police investigation after shutting down one of his clinics in Washington State. News 3 has learned that Shiekh has also operated an office in Henderson. News 3's Kori Chambers is digging deeper. It's still unclear whether this phony doctor fooled any Las Vegans. We spoke with Shiekh's attorney and asked him point blank whether the man was giving...

ASPEN, Colo., Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- A report published today by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in their journal Pediatrics clearly manipulates the incidence of autism in an attempt to clear thimerosal-containing vaccines of any role in the etiology of the disease, asserts parent advocacy group Safe Minds. "Our analysis of the research has uncovered so many questionable practices in the study that the authors' conclusions clearing thimerosal are improbable", says Sallie Bernard, Executive Director. Ms. Bernard also questions why Pediatrics failed to disclose significant conflicts of interest in publishing the study, violating standard editorial practice among medical journals....