Lawrence O’Donnell doesn’t usually talk like this. Though he starts off these seven minutes talking about Kavanaugh, his real focus is the big picture. Here is the crux of the matter:
“There is an unfortunate truth at the base of what most people are feeling tonight. And that truth is that the Senate is not a democratic institution. That is the sickening core of what we feel deep down when we watch the Senate work. The Senate destroys the American illusion of democracy as it was designed to do. We are allowed to ignore that uncomfortable truth most of the time. But not now. The Founders deliberately created an antidemocratic institution and called it the United States Senate. [...]” Watch:
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2012—Feds charge 91 people in $430 million Medicare fraud scheme:
Here's a big win for Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama. It's also evidence of how this administration really is protecting Medicare.
WASHINGTON — A federal strike force has charged 91 people, including a hospital president, doctors and nurses, with Medicare fraud schemes in seven cities involving $429 million in false billings. [...]
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that that in addition to the newly announced criminal charges, her agency used new authority under the Obama administration's health care law to stop future payments to many of the health care providers suspected of fraud.
Those charged include the president of a hospital in Houston along with six others who racked up $158 million in fraudulent billings, two doctors and two nurses in Dallas who for $103 million in fraudulent billings, and a doctor and four chiropractors in Brooklyn, who participated in a scheme netting $23 million. The other cases are in Baton Rouge, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami. The charges include "billing the government for unnecessary ambulance rides in California, writing prescriptions for patients in Dallas who did not qualify for them and paying kickbacks like food and cigarettes to patients in Houston if they attended programs for which a hospital could bill."
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