Jeb Bush Joins the Tenet Gravy Train (To be paid ~ $37,000 a day)

[seafan]

I hope this is getting some heavy scrutiny.



former FL governor



Jeb Bush Joins the Tenet Gravy Train

By Brett Arends
Mutual Funds Columnist
5/9/2007 10:25 AM EDT

A senior member of the Bush dynasty is about to get a large sum of money from a company with a history of ethical violations. .....
Jeb Bush, the president's brother and former governor of Florida, is up for election Thursday as a director of troubled hospital chain Tenet Healthcare (THC) . Assuming he's waved through, his pay in his first year would come to nearly $37,000 a day.
This is the same Tenet that had to pay $900 million to Uncle Sam last summer to settle charges that it had overbilled Medicare and Medicaid over many years.

.....


The U.S. attorneys announcing the settlement accused the company of "fraud" and trying to "manipulate and cheat the system." .....
It's also the same Tenet that just paid $80 million to the IRS after an audit found it owed back taxes going back as far as 1995.
The company recently had to restate nearly five years of earnings statements after an investigation into its books.

.....


Tenet's recent public filings read like a police blotter. One of its clinics in South Carolina performed 436 open heart operations without certification. The company is being sued in California by staff claiming they were systematically short-changed on pay and overtime, in breach of the state's labor code. Three former Tenet staff members, at a New Orleans hospital it owned, are under investigation for allegedly euthanizing four patients following Hurricane Katrina. .....
The company hadn't returned phone calls seeking a comment by press time; neither had the former governor's representatives. ..... This will be Jeb Bush's first job since leaving the governor's office in Tallahassee four months ago.

.....


It's lucky the media aren't paying too much attention. Anyone reading the public filings would have discovered that in your first year, you'll earn $474,500 -- for 13 days' work.
That's $36,500 a day. And the "work" consists of sitting in a board room, so it's not exactly heavy lifting......
Not bad for a guy who could manage only a B.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas. Many of Tenet's 65,000 personnel are qualified medical staff with years of experience. Yet according to public filings, their average salary and benefits last year came to around $69,000 for full-time work.

.....


I'm sure your family lawyer has already explained the details, Jeb, but just to recap the terms: As a nonemployee director you'll get an immediate golden handshake of $260,000 in "restricted stock units." Nothing says "welcome aboard" quite like a quarter-million. Plus you'll get another $130,000 in restricted stock units each year. That's on top of your retainer of $65,000 a year.

And all that is before you turn up for a single board meeting. For each one you attend, you get another $1,500. There's another $1,200 every time you show up at a committee meeting.

.....

[greenbriar]

1. dayum...as a teacher, that is what I get paid a YEAR

and I teach 179 7th graders daily

[AndyA]

2. It sounds like a perfect fit to me!

No company or organization with an iota of dignity, respect, ethics, or morals would touch a member of The Bush Crime Family™ with a ten foot pole.

I hope this company is investigated with even greater scrutiny now that Jeb is aboard.

[napi21]

3. Is this affiliated with George Tenet, the ex CIA Chief?

I never heard his $$ came from the health care system.

[seafan]

11. I don't think this is related to him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tenet

[Tuesday_Morning]

15. no but check this out:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=Tenet+fraud+florida&btnG=Search

No wonder they love him.

[napi21]

18. The MOST NOTEABLE statement in that article!!!!

Thirteen years earlier in 1994, the Department of Justice announced what at the time was a record $379 million settlement with National Medical Enterprises (N.M.E.) on charges of fraud and patient abuse.<6>N.M.E. was the old name for Tenet Healthcare Corp., the same company that paid the government $920 million in 2006 to settle fraud and other charges.



At the time of the 1994 settlement, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said, "Bribes, unnecessary medical treatments and false billings hurt every American. Let the message be very clear. We have made health care a law enforcement priority."<7>



In the 13 years from 1994 through the beginning of 2007, the federal government agreed to 13 separate settlements with this one company – Tenet Healthcare Corp. -- on charges of fraud, false claims, and over-billing Medicare. Many years after the alleged fraud, taxpayers received pennies on the dollar in recoveries under these settlements. The company’s senior executives and Board members got rich, and not one of them faced criminal prosecution, much less was convicted.



Contrary to Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler’s claim that “the system is working,” we believe the history of Tenet is proof that the system is definitely not working.

Dirty Btd's just continued after the Pubs took office!

[Tuesday_Morning]

19. links to current DOJ scandal

rescued from this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x849449#850340

Hat tip to bobthedrummer:

Tenet Healthcare agreed to a $900,000,000 False Claims Act settlement last June, one of the DoJ employees making the announcement was Debra Yang.

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/June/06_civ_406.html


and

Hat tip to L. Coyote:

Carol Lam, brought two successive expensive and extensive criminal prosecutions against Tenet

May 11, 2006
http://hollandhart.typepad.com/healthcare/2006/05/tenet_medicare_.html

On May 8, the Office of Inspector General announced its intention to exclude a Tenet Healthcare Corp. hospital in San Diego from Medicare and other federal programs. The U.S. attorney in San Diego, Carol Lam, brought two successive expensive and extensive criminal prosecutions against Tenet, Alvarado Hospital Medical Center and a former administrator at the hospital.

The allegations were basically that Alvarado used an aggressive physician recruiting incentive program to funnel cash to existing physicians practices in order to induce referrals from these physicians. Both cases took many months to try. Both ended in mistrials when the juries deadlocked.

Congress first mandated the exclusion of physicians and other health care practitioners convicted of program-related crimes in the 1977 Medicare-Medicaid Anti-Fraud and Abuse Amendments. In 1981 Congress enacted the Civil Money Penalties Law, which authorizes the HHS and OIG to impose civil money penalties and program exclusions against individuals and entities who submit false or fraudulent, or otherwise improper claims for Medicare or Medicaid payment. The Medicare and Medicaid Patient and Program Protection Act of 1987 established certain mandatory and discriminatory exclusions for stated types of misconduct.

[Tuesday_Morning]

20. also...

from a DailyKos diary by James Risser:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/17/18120/2944

The first sections of the diary have to do with litigation against Novation LLC for its antitrust violations in the market for medical supplies. Novation's parent is Tenet Healthcare Corp of Texas. During the time of the litigation, three assistant US Attorneys left the Dallas office en masse; two other lawyers mysteriously died within two months of each other in Texas with direct connections to litigation there. And, over the same period, three US Attorneys in the Western District of Missouri headed that office.

Coincidently, Carol Lam was investigating similar health care fraud in San Diego at the time of her dismissal against a Tenet Health Care Hospital.


MUCH, MUCH more at link.

[L. Coyote]

23. NO the other CIA, Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) ended investigations by DoJ and US Attorneys

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x853813#857409

[Vincardog]

4. If I get a BA in LAtin studies can I get that job?

[louis-t]

5. I can't wait for the Big Giant Head to say:

"It's just a partisan witchhunt."
:eyes:

[Virginia Dare]

6. He's hooked up, baby...

roll that corporate gravy train up to the all you can eat buffet, YUM YUM!!!! :grr:

[Selatius]

7. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

-- Gordon Gekko, Wall Street

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/quotes

[Initech]

8. Can we stop calling them the republican party and start calling them the republican MAFIA?

[Pacifist Patriot]

13. Works for me

[Parche]

9. Ferret Face

He belongs in jail

[Clark2008]

12. Awww.... you've insulted ferrets.

:spank:

[bullimiami]

10. more welfare for the rich, corporate and connected.

of course without medicare and government billing they would be up shits creek.

[Pacifist Patriot]

14. $37,000 a day is insane, unethical and immoral

Sorry folks, no one is going to convince me otherwise on this one.

[tabasco]

16. I'm sure the librul media will be all over it.

You betcha! All those libruls like Scarborough and Beck will be beside themselves.

[TahitiNut]

17. Profiteering from the death and suffering of others - ghoulish corporatism is a Bush love.

:puke: Fucking necrophiles.

[seafan]

21. Jeb understands Medicare fraud. Interesting that he's joining Tenet now.

Tenet settles with Florida AG

South Florida Business Journal - February 21, 2006

Tenet Healthcare Corp. says it has reached a broad agreement with Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist to resolve litigation and ongoing investigations.

The matters include a civil lawsuit regarding Medicare outlier payments that was filed by the attorney general's office in March on behalf of 13 county hospital districts, health care systems and nonprofit corporations in Florida.

The government alleged Tenet's charges, which it said were improper, raised the threshold of cost covered for all hospitals, reducing compensation for public hospitals. The government uses the outlier pool to reimburse hospitals for the costs of treating severely ill Medicare patients that far exceed the standard cost of Medicare patient treatment.

The suit accused Tenet (NYSE: THC) of improperly inflating charges to a Medicare fund by more than $1 billion. Crist accused the nation's second-largest for-profit hospital chain of violating the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Acts.

None of Tenet's 15 South Florida hospitals were named as individual defendants in that lawsuit.

The settlement also ends an investigation begun in mid-2003 by the Florida Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of certain Medicaid payments and a separate investigation begun in early 2005 by that unit of certain Medicaid psychiatric billings at a Tenet hospital in South Florida, Tenet said in a statement. In the settlement agreement the company did not admit, and specifically denied all of the allegations made in the suit.

.....

By the way, Jeb and and his pal Miguel Recarey know about Medicare fraud in Florida.


(scroll down for story)

[L. Coyote]

22. PEANUTS: CEOs' fat checks "Tenet Healthcare CEO Jeffrey Barbakow, $143 million..."

"Check" (pun intended) this one out, for some perspective on how these BIG BOYS throw the dough around:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=853813&mesg_id=855921

This guy, Barbakow, is a Bush Pioneer too.

And when Tenet had to pay $215 million to settle fraud lawsuits, Barbakow contributed $1 million. OUCH, a real dent in the $143 million.

A 2003 shareholder committee reported that Tenet could face legal liabilities of up to $6 billion for its Medicare billing practices alone. Tenet agreed to pay a record $54 million in 2003 to settle federal charges that doctors at one of its California hospitals billed Uncle Sam for unnecessary surgeries.

In June 2006, Tenet agreed to pay over $900 million to the United States to resolve its
liability under the False Claims Act and related authorities.

[seafan]

24. ``Just getting them off God-knows-how many watch lists they're on right now would ...be a big step."

I think Jeb wants access to Tenet's records that might be involved in future investigations... what better way than to be named to the board of this criminally and ethically challenged company.

A month ago, when Tenet announced its selection, Bush told The Miami Herald that he liked the idea of going into ``the healthcare industry, which is something I know something about. And it's a place that over the next few years there'll be some unsettled water. I prefer to go to some place where I can add value, rather than go to a place where things are going really well.''

Tenet spokesman Steve Campanini said he wouldn't comment on the TheStreet.com column, but said Bush's compensation package was in line with that of other directors, who do a lot of work for the company.

.....

Ramirez thought Bush would be a great help to Tenet, with his background in government and business. ``Just getting them off God-knows-how many watch lists they're on right now would certainly be a big step.''

After his election Thursday morning, Bush was added to two board subgroups -- the quality, compliance and ethics committee and the nominating and corporate governance committee, Campanini reported.

.....

http://www.miamiherald.com/103/story/103128.html

I'm sure a great sigh of relief went up from the *ethics* committee.


Just to make it clear:

The only thing Jeb knows about health care is how to privatize it, how to make it unaffordable and how to make it inaccessible to the people who need it the most.




(bolding and underlining added)

[seafan]

25. Jeb's push to privatize Medicaid in Florida is now under scrutiny.

Jeb Bush's Medicaid *pilot program* push in Broward and Duval now under scrutiny.


We'll be investigating and unraveling Jeb's handiwork for years to come.

And this guy thinks he is born and bred to rule.