Florida Senate President Don Gaetz (R) ran company now accused of Medicaid fraud (Rick Scott redux)

[seafan]

Florida's Republican government. Shot through with self-serving thieves since 1998.


Lawsuit accuses Senate President Don Gaetz's former company of Medicaid fraud

By Mary Ellen Klas
May 9, 2013

TALLAHASSEE — The U.S. Department of Justice has sued the hospice company founded by Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, accusing the company of engaging in Medicare fraud for more than 11 years, including during the time Gaetz was vice chairman.

The lawsuit, filed May 2 in the district court for the western district of Missouri, alleges that since at least 2002 Vitas Hospice Services and Vitas Healthcare Corp., the largest provider of for-profit hospice services in the country, "misspent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars from the Medicare program."

Gaetz sold the company in 2004 to its current owner, Cincinnati-based Chemed, and reportedly no longer owns any shares or has any affiliation with the company. Chemed operates hospice services in 18 states including Florida.

.....

Gaetz founded Vitas Healthcare as a nonprofit, Hospice Care Inc., in Miami in early 1978 with partners Hugh Westbrook and Esther Colliflower. That same year, Gaetz and Westbrook helped pass Florida's hospice licensure law, which gave his hospice a 20-year head start over for-profit competitors.

.....

Rick Scott, Medicare fraudster. He sits in Florida's governor's office.

Don Gaetz, Medicare/Medicaid fraudster. He is Florida's current Senate President.


Criminal Republican gangsters have now held Florida's government hostage and picked it clean since 1998.


These people are nothing short of bloodthirsty pirates.


Where are the *$#&*$@ U. S. Marshals?

[Enthusiast]

1. Well,

a nonprofit, hospice Care company should not be worth 406 million. That just makes no sense on the face of it. No matter the outcome, you will never convince me that Gaetz didn't reap millions from fraudulent actions that were standard at Vitas. Florida Republicans must be the worst.

We live in a veritable sea of corruption reaching into every facet of our lives, and deaths.

[Enthusiast]

2. Thank you, seafan.

"bloodthirsty pirates", it's a Florida tradition. Ohio's pirates have to sail on Lake Erie.

[Divine Discontent]

3. +1

Florida tradition indeed...

state's a wreck!