Cuomo expands probe of health insurers

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday he issued new subpoenas to Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and WellPoint Inc., and other health insurers in a broadening investigation of possible fraud costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Cuomo is also looking for documents and to subpoena testimony from the CEOs of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Excellus, and HIP health insurers.  Read more 

Maya at Suburban Guerrilla

This guy in Vegas exposes countless people to disease by ordering the reuse of needles at his clinic and the best he can do is sympathy? I cannot even conceive of any punishment bad enough to make justice.

Review Journal Letters to the Editor

Not long ago, an organization named Keep Our Doctors in Nevada pressured the Legislature into an emergency session and persuaded Nevada citizens to vote for medical malpractice protection, all in the name of a phony “medical malpractice crisis.”  Read more 

Unclothed emperor Bush introduces Mukasey to a cheering crowd at [cough] Justice:

“And that is to use all of the strength of mind and body that I have to help you to continue to protect the freedom and the security of the people of this country, and their civil rights and liberties, through the neutral and evenhanded application of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it.”

He said he would “ask myself in every decision I make whether it helps you to do that, to take the counsel not only of my own insights but also of yours, and to pray that I can help give you the leadership you deserve.”

Er, is there any reason to believe—put down your coffee—that the Justice Department has not applied the law in a “neutral and even-handed” manner?

If so, why, who could possibly have been responsible for that?  Read more 

I’ve been a poor blogger so I haven’t been part of this swarm. But I’m going to change that today. Please- whatever time you were going to devote to reading about Vick’s poor dogs, please instead go to Jill’s place and DNA’s place for details. Lynching is alive and well in this country, and that should matter at least as much as the inhumane treatment of some dogs. There are 43,000 sigs on the petition and the Feds are finally getting involved, but of course we can’t trust them to do the right thing.

Watch the skies… At FDL, of course (though, as Eschaton says, no direct links so their servers don’t crash).

UPDATE Man, I’m watching FDL and imagining what the server usage graphs are looking like. The admin is shutting down feature after feature just to bring us the one or two words of the verdict… The JPGs just went… Now it’s down… Now up… Atrios is live-blogging….

UPDATE (Cf. Amos 5:24).

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Go read the whole thing, it’s a chilling testament to our system of “justice:”

Wedick couldn’t look Hamid Hayat in the eye. He had pledged to him months earlier that he was going to do everything he could to see injustice righted, even if it meant turning his back on 35 years in the FBI. “Hamid is a hapless character, but, my God, he isn’t a terrorist. The government counted on hysteria, the 1,000-pound gorilla, to be in the room. And it worked. Damn, it worked.”

He saw one juror holding back tears and made a straight line for her apartment. She wouldn’t let him in at first, talking through a crack. Two hours, four hours, finally she opened the door and told him what he suspected. She didn’t believe Hamid was guilty. So intense was the pressure from fellow jurors to convict him that she had to check into the hospital. Throughout the trial, she said, the foreman kept making the gesture of a noose hanging. “Lynch the Muslim,”  Read more