Medicare

Feds Say Parkland Is No Longer Placing Patients in Jeopardy, Still Needs to Fix Discharge Policy

Parkland has until November to fix its discharge policy and governing board, or the hospital will lose its Medicare funding, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced today. On the plus side, Parkland isn't placing patients who dare visit the hospital in jeopardy anymore, according to ... More >>

Dallas Life Hack: DART Trains Can Double as Mobile Gyms

Riding the DART train, you may have wondered at some point whether those those overhead straps are capable of holding the weight of a fully grown adult. The answer is yes. You've probably never wondered whether those straps are capable of holding the weight of a fully grown adult as he does a dozen ... More >>

A Non-Texan's Guide to Pete Sessions and Jeb Hensarling, Potential House Majority Leaders

House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor went down to ignominious defeat in his Republican primary in Virginia last night, becoming the first sitting majority leader to lose a party primary in the position's history. In the upset's aftermath, two North Texas representatives -- Pete Sessi ... More >>

Tyler Ophthalmologist Tops List of Texas' Top Medicare Billers

On Wednesday, the federal government released a massive trove of Medicare data showing how much some 880,000-plus U.S. healthcare providers were paid for their services in 2012. Fully mining the data will take months or years, but using the data to compile a list of the top Medicare billers took mer ... More >>

Cross Canadian Ragweed, Drowning Pool and Kinky Friedman on Their Worst Gigs Ever

When things go horribly wrong and then keep going that way, there's no better strategy to maintain your sanity than to think about the story you'll have. Music writer Jon Niccum has collected a bunch of those stories from musicians and published them in a book called The Worst Gig: From Psycho Fans ... More >>

Medical City is Dallas' Most Expensive Hospital

It's always been nearly impossible to compare prices between hospitals. For one, most people who find themselves in an emergency room don't have the leisure to shop around. Even if they do, where are they going to turn? Healthcare providers don't typically put their prices on billboards. The opacity ... More >>

How Medicare Became a Thieves' Bazaar

In Dallas and across the country, hospitals, doctors and dealers have made Medicare the nation’s sweetest crime. The feds are now trying to shutter the door.

Pill-Pushing Founder of a South Dallas Clinic Pleaded Guilty to Health-care Fraud Yesterday

In 2003, Dr. Daniel Leong opened the South Dallas Community Medical Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a few blocks from Fair Park. It was something of a second chance for Leong, who pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1989 after he was caught writing prescriptions to supply his wife with near ... More >>

Business Lobbyists Offer Help with Fixing Deficit. Kiss Your Asses Goodbye, Old and Sick People

This country is being hoodooed by the oldest magic show trick in the book -- misdirection. The fictional crisis of entitlement spending is just a new version of the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress, the latest cheap trick by the super-rich to turn our attention away from the truth. For a glimpse of ... More >>

Cantor and Co. Wimped Out at the Cliff's Edge, but There's More Scary Terrain Ahead

New Year's Day was great -- saw The Hobbit with son and girlfriend, came home to prime rib, what could be better? -- but I also spent a hell of a lot of time on the iPad trying to find out if I had fallen off a cliff yet. I'm not sure which was more death-defying -- the movie or real life. The real ... More >>

Texas Leads the League in Bad Nursing Homes, Partly Because It Won't Regulate the Offenders

In March 2011, after federal inspectors visited Keeneland Nursing and Rehab, a Weathorford nursing home, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a report detailing a laundry list of concerns. The report concluded that staff were medicating patients unnecessarily so they'd be easier to d ... More >>

The 10 Most Corrupt Tax Loopholes

If Mitt Romney won't tell you which need to be closed, we will

Day After Obama Talks Up Medicare Fraud Fight in Debate, Feds Say They've Taken Down $100 Million of Local Schemes

One of the things Obama took pains to highlight during last night's debate was just how aggressively his administration has gone after Medicare fraudsters. Remember Jacques Roy, the Rockwall physician accused of masterminding a scheme to bilk the government of $375 million? Probably not, since the d ... More >>

Dallas State Rep. Stefani Carter, Now a Romney Surrogate, on Why Romney Should Get the Black Vote

Seems like it was only a month-and-a-half ago that Stefani Carter, the Republican state rep from North Dallas, was just another face in that Mitt Romney campaign piece about how, despite having just been booed during his speech to the NAACP, black people love him. Now, she's a full-fledged surrogate ... More >>

Two Conventions: One for Old White People, One for Everyone Else

Look, I'm not even the world's biggest fan of political conventions, because they make me feel like I'm trapped in a cubicle with a car salesman. What's to believe about an event where they hire a consultant to do the balloon drop? But with these two conventions freshly behind us, I don't think it ... More >>

Medicare Debate is the Real Death Squad Issue

Reading about the Medicare debate and listening to friends and neighbors talk about it, I always come to the same conclusion: Your opinions depend entirely on your personal experiences. A commenter here the other day said he thought most old people are "responsible" and have provided for their own ... More >>

Lawsuit Accuses Dallas Doctors of "Drive-By Billing" and Other Systemic Medicare Fraud

Two years ago, Cortez Mills was hired by Texas Vascular Associates, a network of nine physicians and a half dozen clinics in Dallas and suburbs, to work in their medical office, where she had the sisyphean task of trying to wrangle reimbursement from Medicare and insurance companies. It didn't take ... More >>

Lewisville Company Pays $5.2 Million to Settle Claims That it Bribed Mexican Government

A local medical device maker agreed yesterday to pay $5.2 million to settle a charges that it systematically bribed officials to win sales contracts with government hospitals in Mexico in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. According to a complaint filed by the SEC, Promeca, the Mexican ... More >>

Dallas Doctor Tops State in Taxpayer-Funded Weight-Loss Surgeries

Over the weekend, the Texas Tribune published one of those eye-opening, number-crunching reports the website has made its niche. This one is about weight-loss surgery, specifically weight-loss surgery that is paid for by taxpayers. This is a relatively new phenomenon, the Tribune notes. Medicare on ... More >>

Federally Mandated Improvements at Parkland Will Top $31 Mil

Parkland Memorial Hospital was almost shut down last year after federal inspectors threatened to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicare and Medicaid funding after finding "deficiencies that represent an immediate and serious threat to patient health and safety." Because of its size and ... More >>

Doctor Accused of $375 Million Medicare Fraud Decides He Won't Practice Medicine Anymore

You might remember Dr. Jacques Roy. Back in February, the feds fingered him as the leader of one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes in history, alleging that he bilked the federal government of nearly $375 million. To recap: Between 2005 and 2011, Roy referred more than 11,000 individual patient ... More >>

The Race for Texas' New Congressional District Is Going To Be Very Interesting. And Crowded.

Let's just call it: Everyone in town is running for Congress. Okay, not everyone, but the race for the newly-created, much-argued-over Congressional District 33 has gotten very, very crowded, especially on the Democrats' side. Last night we watched as former Dallas city council member -- and may ... More >>

From Texas or Russia, Medicare Scamsters Are All the Same -- Greedy

Here we are, with the biggest Medicare fraud in history going -- so we are told -- and The New York Times devotes its front page today to a story about Medicare fraud carried out by organized Russian gangs in ... oh, guess where! ... New York City! What can we do down here in Dallas to get respect? ... More >>

Feds Allege Local Doctor Behind "Largest Healthcare Fraud Case" in U.S. History

​We received a release this morning from the U.S. Attorney's Office inviting us to a noon-thirty press conference at the Earle Cabell, at which time U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldaña, Deputy Attorney General James Cole and a host of other federal officials would address "a major health care fraud enfor ... More >>

Before He Talks to Council, Meet Frank Luntz

Perhaps by now you've seen Rudy Bush's item about Frank Luntz, one of two speakers lined up to address the city council at its Arboretum retreat today. Among pols and media folks, Luntz is a pretty well-known guy -- after all, he's the man who, in 2003, told George W. Bush to start referring to "glo ... More >>

Old White People Who Think They Can Just Check Out Should Think Again

So what is all this anger among the old white people really all about? Why are old white people wearing odd costumes and hating the president all the time? We old white people all know exactly what it is. But nobody will say it out loud. It never comes out in the stories, even though it's right the ... More >>

Dollar Signs and EKG Lines: Dallas Heart Disease Study "Striking" For Poor Young People

​We hear a lot about income inequality these days, as we do about our collectively clogged arteries. But it's less often that we're reminded of how one affects the other. A study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal does just that, tracking the connection between cardiac arrest and ... More >>

Doc's Whistleblowing Results in Parkland, UT Southwestern Paying $1.4 Million to Feds

Gentilello in a 2005 UT Southwestern photo​Amidst all the other things going on with Parkland at the moment, there remains one other Very Big Thing you've probably forgotten all about: Dr. Larry Gentilello's allegations that trauma residents at the county hospital were treating patients and perfo ... More >>

It's Getting Expensive As City, Whistleblowing Auditor Wrangle Over Retaliation Claims

​Of the myriad lawsuits involving the city, Doug Moore v. City of Dallas et al is among the most expensive -- and getting a little more pricey all the time. This case, for those not keeping score at home, has already cost the city $2.5 million, paid to the state and the feds in June over allegatio ... More >>

Baby Buggy Buggers: And You Thought Hummers Were Obnoxious

​Went to NorthPark Center in fancy North Dallas a few afternoons ago. Don't go often. Already have all the monogrammed Kleenex I need. But let me ask you something. What is it with the triple baby carts? You know I'm not making this up. You've seen it. There are people out there who are pushi ... More >>

State GOP Legislators' Revenge Won't Be on Democrats, But on the Old, Poor and Sick

​People all over America should watch the special session of the Texas Legislature, just now beginning, if they want to see what Republicans are really up to. Among other things, they're out to kill Medicare and Medicaid. The regular session was stymied at the last minute when Democratic sta ... More >>

Golden Acres Heads to Federal Court to Take on Kathleen Sebelius and Medicare's "Hospice Cap"

Kathleen Sebelius​The National Alliance for Hospice Access lays out very clearly what the so-called "hospice cap" is, but long story short: In 1982, Congress enacted a law that allowed Medicare beneficiaries to choose hospice care over hospital care. There was one caveat: Congress put in place a c ... More >>

Mexican Macro-economics

Whose Dole Is It, Anyway?

Senators Take Scalpel to Local Medical Equipment Providers' Cost of Doing Business

​Six years ago, Cynthia Fitzgerald filed in Dallas federal court a complaint that The New York Times predicted in 2007 "could become one of the largest whistle-blower lawsuits on record." The suit stemmed from Fitzgerald's tenure at Novation -- a company HQ'd on John Carpenter Freeway that sells m ... More >>

Retirement Rock

Seniors jam in Young at Heart

Wrinkled Old Lizard

See the fake Doors at HOB

Richard Roper: U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. And Very, Very Busy Debt Collector.

More than 4,200 defendants convicted in federal court in the Northern District of Texas owe their victims $1 billion, give or take. Which would make U.S. Attorney Richard Roper and his financial litigation unit the biggest debt collector in North Texas, give or take. Among Department of Justice Dist ... More >>

Ask A Mexican

Identity theft is bad. Dealing with the IRS is even worse.

The Health Care Biz, Sick to Death?

Four years ago, Cynthia Fitzgerald of Dallas -- a former pharmaceutical saleswoman turned health-care equipment purchaser -- filed a federal lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, Becton Dickinson, Merck and nearly a dozen more health-care equipment manufacturers. The suit, which was unsealed in 2007, a ... More >>

Moore Love Letters to Sicko

I just got off the phone with Tom Polston, who sells medical equipment in Plano. The reason for the call: I (like every film critic in town) was forwarded by the local Weinstein Company representative a letter Polston sent to Michael Moore after he saw his health-care doc Sicko at the Angelika in Pl ... More >>

Drug Money

RIght Cross

Is George W. Bush a conservative? Author Bruce Bartlett doesn't think so,

and saying that cost him his job.

Wheeler Dealers

Feds allege scam artists bilked Medicare for millions

Events for the week

A pox on 1995!

Next year will be better

The new Civil War

Tax breaks for corporations are about to tear us in half

Rich man's Robin Hood

GOP budget is greatest-ever transfer of wealth from the Have-Nots to the Haves

Falling into The Gap

The chasm separating the haves and have-nots is getting wider

Couldn't Medicare less

Shady goings-on in the fight over health care