Minnesota Health Insurer Nets America's Delicate Butterflies
by Winsip Custer CPW News Service
In chaos theory it is called the "butterfly-effect". It means that a very small change in one location can create a very big one somewhere else. Something as simple and as seemingly innocent as a fluttering butterfly's wings can have vast implications for everyone.
New York State's Andrew Cuomo didn't miss the delicate flutter, however. His investigation into the Minnesota health insurer’s trade practices led to the American Medical Association’s law suit and the subsequent $350 million settlement to resolve United Health Group’s class-action law suit.
by Winsip Custer CPW News Service
In chaos theory it is called the "butterfly-effect". It means that a very small change in one location can create a very big one somewhere else. Something as simple and as seemingly innocent as a fluttering butterfly's wings can have vast implications for everyone.
World Com, Enron, Columbia/HCA and other recent specimens of corporate malfeasance had a winged companion that like a beautiful little butterfly flew guietly under the radar. Following on the heels of the S&L scandal and preceding the Wall Street bail out by about a year, many Americans missed the flutter of United Health Group and Ingenix's passing flight. Hoping that the season for consumer gouging was a passing and short-lived plague, these two health care butterflies proved people wrong. Scandal was only cocooning.
United’s CEO, Dr. William Wayne McGuire, a graduate of the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas would rise like a butterfly and sting the medical community and American consumer like a killer bee, forgetting the tradition of Hippocrates.
At a time when American families were facing the outsourcing of jobs, the loss of their homes and decline of their communities the smallest "butterfly effect" meant moving from security to chaos. Dr. McGuire's company's wings flapped even more vigorously in this environment. In the end, the medical care consumer was pinned and mounted...each an addition to the collector's collection.
Cuomo’s investigation exposed Ingenix’s data mining program that rigged results to under-reimburse consumers and short-change McGuire’s fellow doctors. Exiting the company like a Monarch fluttering in and out of an open window, McGuire left with over $1 Billion in compensation and his $41 million butterfly collection, which he donated to the University of Florida. The former high school basketball star from Clear Lake, Texas had netted more than baskets and butterflies. In the high-flying world of medical-care rip-offs he reached new heights logging the biggest settlement of its kind to date.
At a time when American families were facing the outsourcing of jobs, the loss of their homes and decline of their communities the smallest "butterfly effect" meant moving from security to chaos. Dr. McGuire's company's wings flapped even more vigorously in this environment. In the end, the medical care consumer was pinned and mounted...each an addition to the collector's collection.
Cuomo’s investigation exposed Ingenix’s data mining program that rigged results to under-reimburse consumers and short-change McGuire’s fellow doctors. Exiting the company like a Monarch fluttering in and out of an open window, McGuire left with over $1 Billion in compensation and his $41 million butterfly collection, which he donated to the University of Florida. The former high school basketball star from Clear Lake, Texas had netted more than baskets and butterflies. In the high-flying world of medical-care rip-offs he reached new heights logging the biggest settlement of its kind to date.
“Out of court settlements of this size aren’t generally given for nothing,” said Dr. Will B. Marcus from Syracuse, New York. “And Dr. McGuire can cocoon nicely in his old age in Florida” said Marcus who sees the support given to Dr. McGuire from Senator Thomas Daschle as a “dash of ill begotten gains and moth eaten graft.”
"What becomes perfectly clear in this case is that while the U.S. health care system is bench marked by the prices that the AMA and its doctors assess are reasonable, routine and fair, there is atop the food chain another category of physician-administrators like 'Dr. Butterfly' who are really high fliers with someone else keeping his wings from being knocked off. You'd think that the collective power of his fellow physicians would keep things in check, but it didn't in the case of Columbia-HCA and that was because of the payola to the Doc's or until someone like Mr. Cuomo steps up to bat and calls them a bunch of self-absorbed A holes....capital A....and I should know! Most doctors I know will tell you that they didn't go into medicine for money alone, but for the satisfaction of helping people. It is, after all, a helping profession. One said "I use to really enjoy being a doctor till the guys with the alligator shoes arrived and screwed it up for everybody," said Dr. Marcus who concluded, "the chickens could ban together to take back the coop from the foxes and wolves, but that would require real guts and sadly, many are too busy gutting someone else."
"What becomes perfectly clear in this case is that while the U.S. health care system is bench marked by the prices that the AMA and its doctors assess are reasonable, routine and fair, there is atop the food chain another category of physician-administrators like 'Dr. Butterfly' who are really high fliers with someone else keeping his wings from being knocked off. You'd think that the collective power of his fellow physicians would keep things in check, but it didn't in the case of Columbia-HCA and that was because of the payola to the Doc's or until someone like Mr. Cuomo steps up to bat and calls them a bunch of self-absorbed A holes....capital A....and I should know! Most doctors I know will tell you that they didn't go into medicine for money alone, but for the satisfaction of helping people. It is, after all, a helping profession. One said "I use to really enjoy being a doctor till the guys with the alligator shoes arrived and screwed it up for everybody," said Dr. Marcus who concluded, "the chickens could ban together to take back the coop from the foxes and wolves, but that would require real guts and sadly, many are too busy gutting someone else."
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| Daschle advocates a government-run competitor to private insurers. But he sells his expertise to UnitedHealth, which opposes such public insurance plan. |
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