Government Perdue Style
February 19, 2010 - by
Last summer, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Lanier Cansler, told the legislature there were fifteen thousand senior citizens cheating Medicaid by getting Home Care even though they were healthy.
So the legislators told Cansler, Alright. Hire doctors, examine the patients, and get the ones who aren’t sick off Medicaid.
A non-profit group of doctors promptly made a proposal to examine each patient for $75. But Cansler said, No. Instead he hired a corporation – that had been one of his clients back when he was a lobbyist – that would have nurses examine patients for $225 per patient.
Next Cansler decided to go ahead and cut 40% of the patients’ care (before the old client did the examinations) by using a computer program. That got Cansler sued. Because it takes a nurse or doctor – not a computer program – to tell if an eighty year old patient is sick.
Next Cansler’s deputy was called to testify at the trial. The lawyer asked, Did you have doctors examine these patients? Lanier’s aide, who’s a doctor, sniffed, No doctor’s ever going to do that. A doctor never has, never will and is never going to do that. The lawyer asked, Well, didn’t this non-profit, right here, offer to have doctors examine each of their patients for $75 – and isn’t this an email from you turning them down?
The whole thing’s a comedy of errors.
Medicaid patients are bouncing around like footballs. The taxpayers are paying for three trials – defending Lanier Cansler. And pretty soon we’ll be paying Cansler’s former client to examine patients with nurses for $225 each – when doctors would have done the same examination for $75.
Which only leaves one question.
What’s the Governor doing about all this? After all, appointing a lobbyist to head Health and Human Services was her idea – and now she’s got a three ring circus on her hands. Is she up in arms?
Well, not exactly. Instead, according to the newspapers last week, the Governor was riding around in a racecar wearing a racing uniform and high heels.
Posted in General, North Carolina - Democrats
Government Perdue Style
February 19, 2010/
Last summer, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Lanier Cansler, told the legislature there were fifteen thousand senior citizens cheating Medicaid by getting Home Care even though they were healthy.
So the legislators told Cansler, Alright. Hire doctors, examine the patients, and get the ones who aren’t sick off Medicaid.
A non-profit group of doctors promptly made a proposal to examine each patient for $75. But Cansler said, No. Instead he hired a corporation – that had been one of his clients back when he was a lobbyist – that would have nurses examine patients for $225 per patient.
Next Cansler decided to go ahead and cut 40% of the patients’ care (before the old client did the examinations) by using a computer program. That got Cansler sued. Because it takes a nurse or doctor – not a computer program – to tell if an eighty year old patient is sick.
Next Cansler’s deputy was called to testify at the trial. The lawyer asked, Did you have doctors examine these patients? Lanier’s aide, who’s a doctor, sniffed, No doctor’s ever going to do that. A doctor never has, never will and is never going to do that. The lawyer asked, Well, didn’t this non-profit, right here, offer to have doctors examine each of their patients for $75 – and isn’t this an email from you turning them down?
The whole thing’s a comedy of errors.
Medicaid patients are bouncing around like footballs. The taxpayers are paying for three trials – defending Lanier Cansler. And pretty soon we’ll be paying Cansler’s former client to examine patients with nurses for $225 each – when doctors would have done the same examination for $75.
Which only leaves one question.
What’s the Governor doing about all this? After all, appointing a lobbyist to head Health and Human Services was her idea – and now she’s got a three ring circus on her hands. Is she up in arms?
Well, not exactly. Instead, according to the newspapers last week, the Governor was riding around in a racecar wearing a racing uniform and high heels.
Posted in General, North Carolina - Democrats