A reminder as to why Frist is giving the Bushies a rim job

[baby_bear]

This article is over two years old, but VERY pertinent to the showdown this week.

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=41139

JANUARY 10 - 16, 2003
The Bad Doctor
Bill Frist’s long record of corporate vices
by Doug Ireland

<snip>
Frist was born rich, and got richer — thanks to massive criminal fraud by the family business. The basis of the Frist family fortune is HCA Inc. (Hospital Corporation of America), the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country, which was founded by Frist’s father and brother. And, just as Karl Rove was engineering the scuttling of Trent Lott and the elevation of Frist, the Bush Justice Department suddenly ended a near-decadelong federal investigation into how HCA for years had defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare (the federal program that covers the military and their families), giving the greedy health-care behemoth’s executives

The government’s case was that HCA kept two sets of books and fraudulently overbilled the government. The deal meant that HCA agreed to pay the government $631 million for its lucrative scams — which, on top of previous fines, brought the total government penalties against the health-care conglomerate to a whopping $1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in history, breaking the old record set by Drexel Burnham.
...
The deal also meant that HCA can continue to participate in Medicare. And, as part of the Bushies’ deal shutting down what Deputy Assistant FBI Director Thomas Kubic called "one of the FBI’s highest-priority white-collar crime investigations," no criminal charges were brought against the top HCA execs who presided over the illegal bilking of federal programs designed to aid the poor — and that includes Senator Frist’s brother, Thomas, HCA’s former CEO (and current director), who’s been described by Forbes magazine as "one of the richest men in America," with a personal fortune estimated at close to $2 billion.
...
What did HCA do? It inflated its expenses and billed the government for the overrun; it billed the government for services ineligible for reimbursement (like advertising and marketing costs). HCA violated both law and medical ethics when, as Forbes put it, "the company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors’ referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors ‘loans’ that were never expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture — and free drugs from hospital pharmacies." This is the ethical climate that reigned in the Frist family’s money machine. In an unguarded moment, Senator Frist told the Boston Globe that conversations with his doctor father about the family calling were like "benign versions of the Godfather and Michael Corleone."
</snip>

more at the original article

Please remind people that Frist is not a kindly doctor, but a smarmy entrepreneur with his hand in the public till and who is totally up to his eyeballs in gratitude to the Bush administration for calling off the dogs from his family's crimes.

Sorry to dogs. That was an insult.

b_b

[Melodybe]

1. Kicked and nominated! I'm sending this to all my friends.

Thanks

Cat murdering bastard, I can't wait to see his ass in jail.

[baby_bear]

6. How did I forget about the cats?

Thanks for awakening my memory, Melodybe.

I really think all this stuff has to be brought up again, because people either didn't get it when it came up or they have forgotten. I think we should all write letters to the editor reminder people how politically/judicially beholden Frist is to Bush on behalf of himself, his family and his "legacy." ahem.

Good doctor indeed.

I'm going to write a letter to the Seattle P-I right now.

b_b

[Shallah Kali]

13. article on his cat killing

Frist asked to atone for killing cats
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021231-071056-3546r

Frist acknowledged in a 1989 book that he routinely killed cats while an ambitious medical student at Harvard Medical School in the 1970s. His office said it had no record on how many cats died. Frist disclosed that he went to animal shelters and pretended to adopt the cats, telling shelter personnel he intended to keep them as pets. Instead he used them to sharpen his surgical skills, killing them in the process.

The newly elected leader of the Senate Republicans revealed the practice in his book "Transplant: A Heart Surgeon's Account of the Life-and-Death Dramas of the New Medicine."

SNIP

"They thought they were adopting the animal out to him," said Bresch. "What he did was fraudulent and probably was illegal."

"It would probably would be considered cruel back even then," added Stephen Musso, senior vice president and chief of operations of ASPCA.

[Warpy]

2. The only person in Congress who is dirtier is Delay

but I'd hazard a guess that Frist has harmed more people.

[baby_bear]

3. Absolutely

Although Delay has probably killed more bugs, literally.

:-)

b_b

[elshiva]

4. The Bad Doctor that says it all.

[ebayfool]

5. Wow, baby_bear - this is exactly why I come to DU! The facts that I

am unaware of & am constantly learning here are outstanding. I have heard nothing @ this, Thank You! I knew he was an arse, but this ... this is beyond anything I could have imagined. I've always been a dem, just how uninformed a dem is being revealed. Daily!

TY!

[nolabels]

15. Careful there, if you find out too much................

Your head might pop off because of it spinning around so fast. Like if you are just even content on lurking some there could be danger :scared:

Oh yea, don't imagine anything either, it too often becomes fact around this place :tinfoilhat:

Democratic Underground recommended by four out of five former playwrights

[ebayfool]

17. Pffffft - I laugh - laugh, I say ... at danger!

As long as nobody sends the newbie on a snipe hunt, it's good!

I really am learning alot here, though. And as an old eBayer, I do know to check a seller's history before bidding or buying - eBay slogan: Buyer beware! I've only been burned there once, & consider it a learning experience as well. At least it doesn't cost me anything to audit the classes here, unlike some of the real-time ones I sat in on!

[baby_bear]

16. What's amazing is that this doesn't get wider play

Oh silly me, I continually overestimate the mainstream media. I'm sure it didn't escape you that this article was from the LA Weekly, not the NYTimes.

Sounds like time to start writing letters to the editors of our respective local papers.

b_b

[LeftofU]

7. Thank you very much.

[specimenfred1984]

8. Yes, Thank You. Rec'd.

Yet another repug who's made a living from other people dying.

Horrible, sick, disgusting.

[AuntiBush]

9. No Wonder he wanted to keep Terri alive!

Awww... now that's what you call a "good" Christian. Of course, the flock will live poorly for their Fristian Pied Piper.

New Frist Logo: "Praise God, and Pass those Big Bucks."

[Clark2008]

10. I've always believed this is why he ran for Senate.

He wanted to curry favor to protect his HCA family.

I mean, the man didn't start voting until a few years before he ran for office - I somehow never got the impression that public service, for what it's worth, was high up on his score card (outside of a few mission trips to perform medical procedures).

[AuntiBush]

11. Caught a C-Span WH Hallway Interview of Frist last week:

Couldn't miss his "haughty," "arrogant" persona.

:rant:

[Shallah Kali]

12. All robbery is vile but stealing from the sick and the poor is worse

Cat Killer Frist and his family are putrid

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. Frist also really, really wants to be President and thinks he can be

the Repub candidate if he kisses enough butts. What slime - the hypocrisy level is absolutely choking.