Obama's Cousin Exposes Dangers of WI Doctors' Fraud vs. Taxpayers & Howard Dean Bribes Wisconsin Fleebaggers to Stay Away and Not Vote
Dr. Milton R. Wolf is not just a Washington Times columnist and a board-certified diagnostic radiologist. He's also the cousin of one Barack Hussein Obama.
This is very informative and I think most of you will be better off for having read this excellent Op-Ed. He says it all, quite succinctly, and he covers things many of us haven't considered; you'll really want to read this:
Organized Medical Fraud in Wisconsin
Government doctors abandon their oath and target the public they serve
By Dr. Milton R. Wolf -The Washington Times | 7:19 p.m., Friday, February 25, 2011
"Primum nil nocere." First, do no harm. This bedrock principle in medicine is a foreign language to most politicians and, sadly, to some Wisconsin doctors, who have violated their oath and the public trust as they have defrauded Wisconsin taxpayers.
Several University of Wisconsin family physicians donned their sacred white coats and were caught distributing fraudulent "sick notes" free for the asking quite literally by the boxful - I wonder who paid for that printing - to teachers and others who skipped work to engage in political protest at the state Capitol in Madison. Whatever the merits of the teachers' protest, there's a word for what these doctors and teachers are perpetrating: fraud.
An army of citizen-journalist bloggers, including Tim Daniels of Left Coast Rebel and Ann Althouse, captured and publicized photographs and video allegedly of publicly funded University of Wisconsin doctors Kathy A. Oriel, James H. Shropshire, Lou Sanner, Hannah M. Keevil, Patrick McKenna and Elizabeth Kvach as they disseminated these fraudulent notes to Wisconsin's publicly funded teachers so the teachers could have a publicly funded day off.
"I'm a doctor. Need a note?" read one sign held high near Dr. McKenna as he openly defrauded taxpayers. "We see a lot of sore throats from speaking out, sore feet from walking, a lot of people kind of chilly, under stress. We say the best thing you can do is be with a large support group," said Dr. Sanner in a pathetic rationalization despite video confirmation that neither he nor his colleagues examined any throats or feet before making their diagnoses and issuing doctor's notes.
Meanwhile, taxpayers and students are paying dearly. According to the Department of Education, two-thirds of Wisconsin public school eighth-graders cannot read at a proficient level. And yet, while the average total compensation of a Milwaukee public school teacher is a staggering $100,005 per year, these entitled teachers demand that taxpayers pay them, quite literally, to agitate for more tax money.
If this degree of financial fraud were perpetrated against health insurance companies, the doctors would face civil and criminal charges. Taxpayers deserve at least as much protection. Concerned Wisconsinites may want to contact the Medical Examining Board at the Department of Regulation and Licensing as well as the University of Wisconsin, which, evidently, has overfunded its family practice department sufficiently to send its staff to political rallies. Finally, medical malpractice carriers certainly recognize the medi- cal-legal liability accepted by these scheming doctors inherent in each of the thousands of new doctor-patient relationships they formed. Wisconsin taxpayers, I suspect, may not think their public university should pay for that liability exposure.
These University of Wisconsin doctors have violated the very core of the Hippocratic Oath: "I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone." Providing blanket diagnoses and treatments without so much as examining a patient is a wild and dangerous departure from the standard of care. These doctors do so, in their own words, to pursue "social activism" rather than patient care.
Dr. Paul Hsieh, co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine, spots an alarming trend: "[A] new form of medical ethics is being taught in medical schools that tells doctors to place the needs of 'society' ahead of individual patients. At best, it forces doctors to juggle the truth and the interests of their patients alongside 'social' considerations. At worst, it will give them license to sacrifice their professional integrity (and their patients' interests) in the name of 'society.' "
Americans should brace themselves for more social activism under Obamacare. Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head Medicare, advocates the alarming notion that "this isolated relationship [between doctor and patient] is no longer tenable" without government intervention. Central planners will decide who is afforded treatment and how much, and their primary concerns will be dedicated to society rather than the patient.
One glaring problem, of course, is that "society" is in the eye of the beholder. The University of Wisconsin's government doctors ordained that the society of government schoolteachers should be served but the society of Wisconsin private-citizen taxpayers should not. And that is the very essence of Obamacare - under which the powerful and connected can divide America into two camps: those who will find favor and those who will not.
Ordinary Americans who play by the rules and don't have special political connections deserve to be a part of "society," too. Thus read one sign displayed by a hardworking American taxpayer on the streets of Madison last weekend: "I would've come yesterday, but I had to work."
Dr. Milton R. Wolf blogs at miltonwolf.com.
Howard Dean Bribes Wisconsin Fleebaggers to Stay Away and Not Vote – NoisyRoom
Howard Dean Bribes Wisconsin Fleebaggers to Stay Away and Not Vote
From: 1389 Blog – Counterjihad!
Yes, you read this correctly. Failed presidential candidate Howard Dean has collected a slush fund for the express purpose of bribing the “fleebagging” Wisconsin Democrat State Senators to remain in hiding and not report to the legislature to vote.
Without Howard Dean’s slush fund, at least some of those Democrat legislators would find it necessary to return to the legislature to pick up their paychecks in person, thus providing enough State Senators to form a quorum. A quorum is required for voting on the Budget Repair Bill proposed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker that will require public employee union members to contribute more toward their benefits and restrict their collective bargaining privileges. The Republicans have enough votes in the State Senate to enact that legislation without delay.
A recent article in American Spectator follows the money to expose the flagrant corruption associated with this slush fund. However, like many articles in the media and the blogosphere, it stops short of drawing the necessary conclusion from the facts that it has established. The article talks about this slush fund as though it were nothing more than a campaign contribution that is well over the legal limit in amount. The article even admits that there is no election coming up in the near future for which the “fleebaggers” would need to collect campaign funds. It also shows that the funds are instead being used for lavish travel expenditures, thus rewarding the “fleebaggers” for their gross dereliction of duty.
It is time to stop pussyfooting around and start calling things what they are.
This slush fund is no campaign contribution. It’s naked bribery. Howard Dean is paying the Wisconsin “fleebaggers” to stay away from the legislature so as to block the enactment of legislation that Howard Dean wants blocked.
Free Online Law Dictionary: Legal definition of bribery
The offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties.
The expectation of a particular voluntary action in return is what makes the difference between a bribe and a private demonstration of goodwill. To offer or provide payment in order to persuade someone with a responsibility to betray that responsibility is known as seeking Undue Influence over that person’s actions. When someone with power seeks payment in exchange for certain actions, that person is said to be peddling influence. Regardless of who initiates the deal, either party to an act of bribery can be found guilty of the crime independently of the other.
A bribe can consist of immediate cash or of personal favors, a promise of later payment, or anything else the recipient views as valuable. When the U.S. military threatened to cancel a Texas relocation company’s contracts to move families to and from military bases, the company allegedly gave four representatives in Congress an all-expenses-paid weekend in Las Vegas in January 1989, and $2,500 in speaking fees. The former president of the company was indicted by a federal Grand Jury in 1994 on bribery charges for both gifts.
Note that it is equally blameworthy to give or offer a bribe as it is to accept or solicit it.
The American Spectator: Howard Dean and the $100,000 Wisconsin Slush Fund
By Jeffrey Lord on 2.22.11 @ 6:09AM
You can call them “Dean Dollars.”
Former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a one-time presidential candidate, is the founder of a group that by mid-day of President’s Day had raised over $100,000 in a slush fund to “back” the on-the-lam Wisconsin Democratic State Senators.
The Dean Dollars are being specifically funneled to the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Committee (SSDC) — an apparent violation of Wisconsin election law that pointedly says, according to the Wisconsin Election Board’s Legal Counsel in a 2005 decision, that the “SSDC may not accept a contribution of more than $6,000 from a single committee in a calendar year.” (Note: the Election Board is now called the “Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.”)
The money, requested in an e-mail obtained over the weekend by The American Spectator, is being solicited in $14 dollar contributions through the Dean-founded million-member “Democracy for America” grassroots organizing group chaired by Dean’s brother Jim. There are no prohibitions on more generous donations of any amount. The funds are being collected through the left-wing “Act Blue” fundraising website, which identifies itself as “the online clearinghouse for Democratic action.”
The $14 dollar solicitation is symbolic — as in one dollar for every one of the fourteen Democrats in the Wisconsin State Senate. All of whom have now fled the state in a political battle royal over budget cuts and collective bargaining rights for public employees with the newly elected Republican Governor. On Monday, the Huffington Post quoted Senator Tim Carpenter, one of the fourteen, as saying of the decision to remain out of state: “We’ll be here until Gov. Walker decides that he wants to talk.”
Carpenter made no mention of who was paying his expenses.
The slush fund revelation comes on the heels of the discovery by both Fox News reporter Mike Tobin and the Wisconsin-based John K. MacIver Public Policy Institute of an organized effort by some Wisconsin doctors — who were deliberately handing out “doctor’s notes” to teachers feigning illness in order to protest the governor’s legislative plans. Which would be fraud, if proven in court. The Fox report uncovered at least one doctor connection to the presumably taxpayer-funded University of Wisconsin Family Medical Program. The MacIver video, posted over the weekend by my American Spectator colleague Philip Klein, is a particularly stunning depiction of both teachers and doctors quite publicly engaged in what appears to be outright fraud, a question raised by one reporter to an angrily defensive doctor on the MacIver video.
Question for you:
Would it be appropriate to call the FBI and ask them to investigate this matter further?
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