HealthSouth Fraud Larger Than Estimate

[displacedtexan]

HealthSouth Fraud Larger Than Estimate
28 minutes ago

By Jed Seltzer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - HealthSouth Corp. (Other OTC:HLSH - news) said on Tuesday its massive accounting fraud was much larger than earlier estimates and may have exceeded $4 billion.

Officials for Alvarez & Marsal, restructuring specialists hired to turn around the scandal-ridden operator of rehabilitation and surgical centers, said at a financial update meeting in New York that the total amount of fraudulent entries in HealthSouth's accounting ledgers totaled between $3.8 billion and $4.6 billion.
That compares with an estimate last July that the company would have to adjust its balance sheet downward by $2.5 billion.

more...


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&e=1&u=/nm/20040120/bs_nm/health_healthsouth_dc


Isn’t the Bush* family heavily invested in HealthSouth?

[arcane1]

1. Medicare bill to add $3.6M to HealthSouth bottom line

http://www.bizjournals.com/birmingham/stories/2003/12/08/story7.html

-snip-

Medicare reform legislation passed by Congress last month and awaiting President Bush's signature will have a small but positive effect on HealthSouth Corp.'s bottom line.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had planned to reduce its reimbursement schedule for physical therapists by 4.5 percent beginning Jan. 1.

The Medicare reform bill cancels that reduction in favor of a 1.5 percent increase for next year and 2005. For HealthSouth, that will mean a potential addition of as much as $3.6 million.

[displacedtexan]

2. and doesn't this have fristprints all over it?

hhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

[arcane1]

3. they were giving Enron fistfulls of cash before their fraud came out

tax breaks, inaction on the California thieving, etc.

sound familiar

[Just Me]

6. SURPRISED???? ANYONE HERE, SURPRISED!!!!

Have we even approached a "peeking Tom" glance at the level of corporate corruption in this country (let alone the depth of U.S. corporate crime around the globe)??? It's the really BIG fish that get away with the most, ESPECIALLY if they have close ties to either the executive or legislative branches. While tens of thousands of people sink as a result of corporate voodoo,...the politically tied execs still are pulled to shore.

Has anyone here read Palast's, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"?

[arcane1]

7. yes I have, and it's the best BOOK money can buy

these thugs would've been gone long ago if the masses knew what we knew

[SoCalDem]

4. Greed knows no bounds..

If the guys at the top can get away with it, they will take as much as they can get their hands on.. No wonder "health care is rationed".. Every xray that Grandma gets, just "wastes" money that could go into the "CEO enrichment fund".:(

[wryter2000]

5. Frist?

Is that Frist's HMO?

[Sugarbleus]

10. Does anyone else

think that Frist needs some medical help himself? He looks really bad. Pale, gaunt, bug eyed, and "alien looking" in general.

[pfitz59]

15. Katie Couric zingered him today......

Questioning SOTU! Frist came unglued. Perhaps the lies and hypocrisy are finally getting to him.

[ozymandius]

11. Frist's company is HCA (Coliseum) Healthcare. nt

[Bozvotros]

8. I worked for these crooks once.

About eight years ago, this group of white collar thugs bought up all of Continental Rehabilitation Services, where I was working. Continental's upper management, I had come to learn, consisted of a group of criminals who had been part of the Psychiatric Fraud Machine known as NME or National Medical Enterprises. Google for more fun.

NME was guilty of wholesale psychiatric fraud all over the country and they along with Charter Hospitals, helped to destroy Mental Health parity. NME was paying for referrals and patients and using up hundreds of thousands of dollars of insurance coverage in bogus long term "treatment" otherwise known as illegal imprisonment, for people with very ordinary emotional problems. Lots of psychiatrists were in on the scam. After the FBI came in and seized their records, few of the NME upper management saw some fines and brief jail time. The rest escaped into other hospital chains, including Continental.

The good doctor, Senator Frist knows all about it. HCA, his brain child has had more than their "fair share" of Medicare fraud cases for which he has no doubt benefitted magnificently.

http://www.corp-research.org/jan03.htm
http://www.freedommag.org/english/canada/400M/page02.htm

And as always the BFEE and our beloved scalliwag Chimp-in-Chief was in on the fun. This time Bush along, with his Texas Ranger's benefactor Richard Rainwater made off with their filthy lucre without so much as an "excuse me." The usual excuse of ignorance was accepted without question. For all the queasy familiar details check out
http://www.thedubyareport.com/patientsrights.html

Always, in healthcare fraud, the major players escape to set up their fraud and plunder schemes with another chain.

Scrushy, the head of Healthsouth was an amazingly cocky, ruthless prick who aggressively bought up his competition and then basically gave his CFO's orders to legally defraud Medicare and Medicaid by finding every loophole possible. Every CFO who worked for Healthsouth should be forced to give testimony about how they worked the system.

I thought Continental was bad but five minutes after meeting the Healthsouth acquisition team was all it took for me to size these evil bastards up and I made my escape. I still feel a little dirty.

[sandnsea]

9. CompCare

My husband worked for them about 20 years ago, corporate drug/alcohol treatment. Horrible people, really bad. He quit after just a few months. It's these fraudulent billings that raise health insurance prices too. CompCare had a Golden Pass type program where you could check back in if you relapsed. But my husband and his supervisor, an old friend, quickly looked at their basic program and said it needed to change or people would relapse. Right on time. They met with corporate execs who were visiting their unit and explained the problems. Blank stares. Yep, relapse was the plan. Disgusting.

[colonel odis]

12. i lived in birmingham

during scrushy's salad days. perhaps the biggest ego conceivable.

he fancied himself a guitar player, so he was always financing bands and music videos and the such. his bands were usually pretty awful, so he'd buy a club in order for them to have a place to play.

it's hubris. all about the hubris.

[Stuckinthebush]

13. I live there now

Scrushy is an ass. This guy has a bigger ego than W. himself. He gave money to different projects around the city with the stipulation that his name be displayed. So, now you have a crooks name on all of these buildings and roadways. It is freakin' hilarious because you know that people are now trying to figure out how to get his name off of the Richard Scrushy Vestavia Public Library, for instance.

This scab on society needs to rot in jail for years.

[prolesunited]

14. And we should turn more taxpayer dollors

over to private corporations why? :shrug:

I know fraud and abuse exists in government endeavors, but has there ever been any such abuse on such a grand scale? It would be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison how much government abuse vs. private fraud has cost the American taxpayers.

Frankly, I would rather trust career civil service professionals with my tax dollars than criminals like these.

[hatrack]

16. Come to think of it, did massive corporate crime get one word last night?

Didn't think so.