Medicare Advantage insurers upcoded patients to maximize money from Uncle Sam. Such moves are not new. Take Columbia/HCA's history of fleecing the Medicare program.
In 2003 former Columbia/HCA founder and CEO Rick Scott resigned in the wake of a $1.7 billion fine for defrauding Medicare in a variety of schemes. Scott is now a U.S. Senator from Florida and charged with getting more Red Team members elected in the Senate.
Scott left Columbia/HCA and started Solantic, a company with primary care clinics. In 2011 Scott sold Solantic to private equity underwriter (PEU) Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe.
NBC News noted the damage one private equity firm did to anesthesia departments across the U.S.
...some physicians and patient advocates say the health care investments of private-equity firms and their drive to reap relatively short-term profits are inconsistent with putting patients first. Independent academic studies find that private equity’s laser focus on profits in health care operations can result in lower staffing levels at hospitals and nursing homes.
The Carlyle Group and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund donated to Scott's current campaign. PEU hellhound Cerberus Capital gave big to Scott's SuperPAC.
Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and increasingly more are one. They serve the profiteers not the common person being preyed upon by the greed and leverage boys. Who has your back when you walk into a hospital? It's very difficult to know.
Update 10-11-22: Axios reported Brookdale Senior Living could be the next PEU target. Recall how The Carlyle Group ran nursing home giant ManorCare into the ground. Time will reveal how PEU ownership will impact women's health pharma products maker Theramax.
Update 10-12-22: Rick Scott is the biggest PEU investor in Congress with $76.5 million in PE holdings. Among the 22 members of the House and Senate who reported investing in private equity last year, 10 were Republicans and 12 were Democrats. 415 of 435 members of the House and nearly every senator took money from the industry in the run up to the last election.
Update 12-7-22: Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein said last week
Right now, at Carlyle, an enormous percentage of our investments go into healthcare, not only in the US, but also around the world. It is one of the fastest-growing and likely most stable areas of economic growth. When I worked in the White House in the late 1970s, 7% to 8% of US GDP was in healthcare. Today, it’s roughly 20%.
The profit curve is being bent in the direction of the greed and leverage boys.
Senator Scott embraced Red Team loser Herschel Walker as a key GOP leader.
Update 3-30-23: Carlyle is using Atmas Health to bid on Medtronic's patient monitoring and respiratory interventions businesses.
Update 8-16-23: Moneywise reported:
Rick Scott and Tommy Tuberville are but two wealthy men in the U.S. Senate. Rich men north of Richmond...United States Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has just disclosed $250,000 in futures trading in wheat, corn, soy and cattle.
On August 14, Tuberville — who sits on the Senate Committee for Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry — reported multiple agricultural trades through June and July, all in the range of $1,000 to $15,000.
“He literally influences agricultural futures via legislation and is trading it actively,” Unusual Whales wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter — before pointing out Tuberville has “previously, scored some big gains on futures in wheat, corn and soy.”