With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans? Cabdrollery:

At the end of September, I posted on how some private contractors for a Medicare audit had turned into bounty hunters eagerly savaging the bills of rehab hospitals providing services to Medicare beneficiaries. The audit was a trial run ordered by Congress and involved three states: California, Florida, and New York. In California, records show that the auditors routinely rejected bills (up to 90%) from those rehabilitation hospitals providing services to those who'd had total knee or total hip replacements. As a result, several of those hospitals have closed or are about to.

The private contractor doing the audit in California is PRG-Schultz. Among the investors in PRG-Schultz is Blum Capital Partners, headed by Richard Blum of San Francisco. Blum is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Well done, Ruth!

I love contractors. I wonder if we're doing the same thing in Iraq? I'm picturing a virtuous cycle where contractor A shoots a few civilians, contractor B denies them care on commission, then they all die, then things get all peaceful, just in time for the primaries ... Win win all around!