US sues Kaiser Permanente over alleged Medicare fraud

[Grokenstein]

2. Good. I wonder if KP's still pushing Jenny Craig on patients.

Last time I went, my GP was very desperate to get me to sign on; I have to presume there were commissions for every sucker hooked.

But I had already seen Jenny Craig ads on late-night teevee promising "guaranteed" results--complete with an asterisk leading to a blurb of fine print negating the very same promise--and a mass-produced one-size-fits-all solution to a problem that is actually rather complex was already suspicious. You know how this game is played: they set you up to fail, and when it happens they say you didn't try hard enough. Still, a polite "hard pass" earned me a cold shoulder on the problem I came to see the doctor about in the first place.

Kaiser's specialists were great, but four out of five of the general practitioners I saw were primarily interested in pushing pills and plans. Gotta pay for that annual multimillion-dollar ad campaign to convince everyone that the HMO is "in the hands of doctors." (Wow, linked article is from 2002! They've been in trouble before.)