The lawsuit alleges that the company billed the state's TennCare program for more drugs than were actually delivered to the company's skilled nursing facility in Knoxville, resulting in serious overpayments. According to the Tennessee attorney general, this is the largest settlement ever reached by the TennCare Provider Fraud Task Force under the False Claims Act. Both PharMerica and Kindred have denied any wrongdoing, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

The whistle-blower responsible for bringing the overpayments to light will receive a reward of roughly $220,000, according to the terms of the June 5 settlement. Jeanne Mayes was a billing clerk at the facility, and filed the original suit on Feb 11, 2005, according to the News Sentinel. PharMerica was created from the merger of two institutional pharmacy businesses, PharMerica Long-Term Care and Kindred Pharmacy Services.

The next question for proponents of the for-profit model, is this: if economic problems drive companies to cut costs by dropping their employee health insurance programs, and as increasing unemployment makes people lose their employer paid health care, are you willing to bail out the insurance companies, who are already losing customers to the economic downturn? How far are you willing to go to support a health-care system mediated by for-profit insurance companies? Obviously, the same influence insurance companies now wield to kill the “public option,” will be used to convince Congress that the insurers are “too big to fail.” Since we won't have a public option, they will argue that “millions of Americans will be without health insurance if we fail.” How ironic that we could have “single payer” as we pump massive taxpayer bailouts into the insurance companies.

Will the same people arguing here to preserve the insurance company profits then argue, as they have with bank and auto company bailouts, that we should “let them fail?” Or perhaps those here will argue that people should be required by law to have health insurance, as they are currently required to have liability insurance. Then the uninsured will get a broken arm set at the hospital, and then be arrested for not having insurance. Of course, we will pay for their health care in prison.

Just as with immigration reform, the moderates here should have seen “the fence” as an easy precursor to buy goodwill for more substantive changes, the pro-expand government helathcare crowd should be playing the let's do something incremental with the uninsured poor instead of starting withthrowing out the private insurance model as you yourself are advocating.

You're the party in power……..you have two easy choices, stop pretending you want bipartisanship and just get 'er done or if you do want sign-on from the opposition, give them something their philosophy might allow them to sign-on to.

As for this blog, either can Stickings and Kattenburg or hire some lean right authors who are not just simply apologists.

learning Mandarin…

Make no mistake about it, anyone blogging here or elsewhere arguing that universal health care is too expensive is on payroll for BigInsurance and BigPharmaceuticals. Mark my words.

Either that or they have stock, investments or other vested $$$ interest in the exploitation of human disease-for-profit..

This, quite frankly, is no argument whatsoever. The idea that the length of a document has some bearing on whether or not it will work is absurd. I guess you never made it through Gone with the Wind. Or The Bible.

@AnnoyMouse. Do you think it would be better to just let the brown people die off? Maybe instead of blaming the scary aliens (and the homeless, and pretty much anyone who is poor who has the temerity to get sick), we could treat their colds so they don't end up in the ER with pneumonia. Just an example, obviously.

Now, I don't know if the plans being discussed are going to solve the very wrong aspects, but that doesn't mean there isn't a solution, and it doesn't mean everything's just dandy the way it is.

I wonder if San Diego has similar statistics? New York City?

So Congress and President Obama wants to put the Nation in more debt by up to 1.6 trillion dollars or more, cut Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement to hospitals and providers by over 400 billion AND raise another 700 billion in taxes in order to put through a government run “public” health care plan which will destroy our current health care system? All so only a fraction of the 15% of the uninsured population can have free health insurance. Sounds like a really great idea! To heck with the other 85% Congress has exempted itself from the plan but the rest of us will be forced to fall in line with socialized medicine like the failed Medicaid which is causing States like New York and California to go bankrupt.

Meanwhile the government run plan will outbid and thus drive private care out of the market entirely. Then EVERYONE will have coverage but fewer doctors to take care of the millions of additional people being forced into a plan by the government because without any “skin in the game” aka profit, the doctors will just leave the game or bail out due to pure exhaustion.

It”ll be so great. Shortages of providers, long long waiting lists, cuts in basic care, denials of basic care, preventative care and medicines. Life and death decisions on who gets what health care will be made by government bureaucrats based on political favoritism and who the government deems of “worth” to society. Sounds like hell to me.

A few questions Congress and President Obama should be asking before pushing through another failed government run program that will raise the deficit and taxes all so only a fraction of the uninsured can be covered:

The CBO has determined that the government option is going to result in 1 to 3 trillion dollars of extra debt yet only cover a third of the uninsured. Is this an acceptable price to pay for so little return?

A lot of economists are saying that the higher deficits that this plan represents will cause inflation to rise making the dollar worth half its current value. Is this ok with you?

Many are predicting that there will be a shortage of doctors available to meet the rising demands of millions of more people who would be insured under the plan and that some physicians will retire rather than receive the lower compensation this plan calls for to pay for their services. Is this ok with you?

Will your plan result in the government rationing of health care for start of life, end of life, and chronic medical conditions?

Another government run health care plan, Medicaid, is causing States like New York and California to go broke, how do you plan to prevent another even bigger government health care plan from bankrupting America?

Sure would be nice eh Sil? I'm not sure I'd know how to act if it really happened though. If any issue deserves to be dealt with forthrightly, without caving, it's the state of healthcare in the US.

* It was written and hoped to get passed before the economy and federal finances were put in order.

* It's over 600 pages.

* It has almost 400 amendments.

IT DESERVES TO DIE.

Among many of us, yes, but not among the faithful, including the media, which will try to extend the honeymoon.

Yes, Sibelius, to name one example, mentioned this.

The issue still is federal control, which is there even aside from strings being attached to federal money.

This is a quasi-public (“quasi-private”) scheme, trying to remove the “public” (“government”) moniker and stigma among much of the public while that's what in effect it's going to be. (“AmCare”)