Depending on how this goes, there may be a few new neighbors on Mr. Madoff's cell block. It's about time. Our criminal justice system is so often tilted against the poor, minorities, petty criminals and addicts who would benefit more from treatment than incarceration, those without substantial means to defend themselves. Sometimes we put the wrong people in jail. Commit a crime in the street, you go to jail. Crime in the suite? The company picks up the tab and you take your high-priced legal beagle to lunch--on the company expense account, of course. Maybe that's about to change, at least a little.
A couple of years back the state of New York fined United Health Group fifty million for failing to properly pay claims. But hey! What's a few measly million when you're making billions? Like, who cares? So what if the business practices are a bit on the shady side? Who cares if the rules get bent a bit? Get by with it, so much the better for the bottom line. Get caught, write it off as a business expense, sort of like taking your client out to an expensive lunch. Anyway, what's a bit of health care fraud among friends, especially when the company is going to pick up the tab?
Well, thanks to a few good folks over at Health and Human Services, that attitude may be in for a change. Seems some of them got a bit frustrated over the way health care industries have been ripping us off--to the tune of about sixty billion a year. Sixty billion a year!!! This at a time when Congress is talking about cutting my mom's medicare? What's wrong with this picture?
Here's what Lewis Morris, chief counsel for the inspector general at HHS, told Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Huffington Post earlier this week: "When you look at the history of health care enforcement, we've seen a number of Fortune 500 companies that have been caught not once, not twice, but sometimes three times violating the trust of the American people, submitting false claims, paying kickbacks to doctors, marketing drugs which have not been tested for safety and efficacy. To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren't getting it. If writing a check for 200 million isn't enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top."
There you go! Now we just might be getting somewhere. So Bernie may be getting some new neighbors. And for most of us, it's about time. I mean, really, who's the bigger crook? The guy who gets busted and goes up state for getting pulled over with three joints in his glove compartment? Or the guy who's spent years ripping off taxpayers for billions in corporate profits, to the extent that it's killing our ability to provide health care for our elderly parents, and never even gets arrested?
HHS is sending a wake up call to the health industry with their case against Howard Solomon, CEO of Forest Laboratories, a big pharma firm that makes antidepressants and other meds. Last year Forest plead guilty to a few justice department charges, and cut a deal with a check for 313 million. Seems they ignored an FDA notice to stop peddling a new drug that hadn't been approved. But, and here's the key point, as usual, all the bigwigs avoided jail time. So where's the incentive for the folks at the top to stay honest?
I think it's time Bernie got some new neighbors. So here's a notice to all you CEOs and other assorted corporate types who are tempted to break the rules every once in a while in the name of big time cash. It might serve you well to hang a sign on the wall across from your desk. A sign that says, "As they say up state: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
The Jawbone
