Rascal on the Loose
March 2, 2010 - by
Sometimes you come across a rascal who’s got so much brazenness and old-fashioned nerve you just can’t help but admire his audacity – throw him in a briar patch and he’ll land on his feet and end up owning the place.
That’s why it’s hard not to keep an eye peeled to see what Lanier Cansler is up to next –like Fagan or ‘The Artful Dodger’ when it comes to chicanery Lanier’s in a league of his own.
Last summer, right after he got himself appointed to the Governor’s Cabinet, he ambled over to the General Assembly and told legislators he was shocked to discover thousands of seventy and eighty year old patients in the Medicaid Home care program were cheating like blazes.
45% of the patients, he told legislators with a straight face, were cheating and shouldn’t be receiving one dram of care.
And of course as soon as legislators got a glimpse at the picture Lanier painted of massive welfare fraud they cut every dram of care those patients were getting and told him to get the cheats off the rolls. Lanier nodded and said he was up to the job but that to do it he might have to hand out a few no bid contracts – and legislators gave him the green-light to go ahead.
Which Lanier promptly did, passing out $250 million in contracts – a lot of them to his friends and former clients.
The first sign Lanier had made a slip popped up when the “Independent Assessments” (to identify the Medicaid patients who were cheating) came back. It took a court case and a deposition to pull the report out of Lanier’s mitts – and the reason was simple: The report showed 3% (not 45%) of the patients were ‘cheats.’ (Another 5% of the elderly people had failed to fill out their paperwork properly – so Lanier promptly branded them cheats too).
Miscalculating the number of cheats tenfold would have daunted a lot of folks but not Lanier. He had 36,000 sick patients on his hands in need of care and no money to care for them but he came up with a solution that was a masterwork of simplicity: He simply changed the definition of sick. With the stroke of a pen he redefined an 80 year old patient who was very sick into a patient who was barely sick and who – Lanier said – was cheating to get a lot of care he didn’t need.
Next he cut 87% of the patients’ care 45%.
That’s when a State Judge stepped in and stopped him dead in his tracks with an Injunction – a temporary problem Cansler will surely overcome in some ingenious manner none of us have imagined.
And what does our self-proclaimed “Jobs, Jobs, Job’s” Governor have to say about all this? She’s got a Cabinet Secretary who’s hoo-doo’ed legislators and gotten sued twice and enjoined twice – all of which is bound to come home to roost on her doorstep. So is she having, maybe, doubts? Or second thoughts? Nope. Lanier’s got her sold. Those two judges who enjoined him may have given him a spot of trouble but he’s got the Governor convinced he’s dead right when he says 97% (his latest figures) of the Medicaid patients are cheats – the Governor hasn’t even chirruped once in disapproval.
Rascal on the Loose
March 2, 2010/
Sometimes you come across a rascal who’s got so much brazenness and old-fashioned nerve you just can’t help but admire his audacity – throw him in a briar patch and he’ll land on his feet and end up owning the place.
That’s why it’s hard not to keep an eye peeled to see what Lanier Cansler is up to next –like Fagan or ‘The Artful Dodger’ when it comes to chicanery Lanier’s in a league of his own.
Last summer, right after he got himself appointed to the Governor’s Cabinet, he ambled over to the General Assembly and told legislators he was shocked to discover thousands of seventy and eighty year old patients in the Medicaid Home care program were cheating like blazes.
45% of the patients, he told legislators with a straight face, were cheating and shouldn’t be receiving one dram of care.
And of course as soon as legislators got a glimpse at the picture Lanier painted of massive welfare fraud they cut every dram of care those patients were getting and told him to get the cheats off the rolls. Lanier nodded and said he was up to the job but that to do it he might have to hand out a few no bid contracts – and legislators gave him the green-light to go ahead.
Which Lanier promptly did, passing out $250 million in contracts – a lot of them to his friends and former clients.
The first sign Lanier had made a slip popped up when the “Independent Assessments” (to identify the Medicaid patients who were cheating) came back. It took a court case and a deposition to pull the report out of Lanier’s mitts – and the reason was simple: The report showed 3% (not 45%) of the patients were ‘cheats.’ (Another 5% of the elderly people had failed to fill out their paperwork properly – so Lanier promptly branded them cheats too).
Miscalculating the number of cheats tenfold would have daunted a lot of folks but not Lanier. He had 36,000 sick patients on his hands in need of care and no money to care for them but he came up with a solution that was a masterwork of simplicity: He simply changed the definition of sick. With the stroke of a pen he redefined an 80 year old patient who was very sick into a patient who was barely sick and who – Lanier said – was cheating to get a lot of care he didn’t need.
Next he cut 87% of the patients’ care 45%.
That’s when a State Judge stepped in and stopped him dead in his tracks with an Injunction – a temporary problem Cansler will surely overcome in some ingenious manner none of us have imagined.
And what does our self-proclaimed “Jobs, Jobs, Job’s” Governor have to say about all this? She’s got a Cabinet Secretary who’s hoo-doo’ed legislators and gotten sued twice and enjoined twice – all of which is bound to come home to roost on her doorstep. So is she having, maybe, doubts? Or second thoughts? Nope. Lanier’s got her sold. Those two judges who enjoined him may have given him a spot of trouble but he’s got the Governor convinced he’s dead right when he says 97% (his latest figures) of the Medicaid patients are cheats – the Governor hasn’t even chirruped once in disapproval.