Hey Bernie and Kamala, Government Can’t Run Medicare

Posted on August 8, 2019August 8, 2019 by Denise Simon

Legitimately that is. The crimes and fraud within the system are so bad already that the FBI is and has been overwhelmed with cases.

Image result for Medicare Fraud Strike Force (MFSF)
Heck, just last month, the FBI announced the results of Operation Brace Yourself. 24 people were arrested due to Medicare fraud billing amounting to over $1 billion. Get that? One case, over a billion dollars. A medical equipment company out of the Philippines recruited people, there were kickbacks, money-laundering, yachts, luxury real estate deals all inside of at least 100 equipment companies. This FBI investigation involved 20 field offices, agency partners, the IRS, the IRS, Health and Human Services, the Department of Veteran Affairs and even Secret Service.

But wait, that was just one case.

How about a few more?

District of Columbia Physician Indicted for Alleged Role in $12.7 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme
A physician with a practice in the District of Columbia was charged in an indictment unsealed today for his role in an alleged $12.7 million health care fraud scheme to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare for complicated medical procedures he never provided.

Telemarketer And His Companies Agree To Pay $2.5 Million To Settle Allegations That They Operated Telemedicine Schemes Involving Illegal Kickbacks And Unnecessary Prescriptions
United States Attorney Maria Chapa Lopez and U.S. Attorney J. Douglas Overbey for the Eastern District of Tennessee announce that Scott Roix, together with several entities through which he ran his telemarketing business, including HealthRight, LLC; Health Savings Solutions, LLC; Vici Marketing, LLC; and Vici Marketing Group, LLC (hereinafter collectively referred to as “marketing companies”), have agreed to pay $2.5 million to resolve allegations that Roix and these marketing companies violated the False Claims Act by causing the submission of false claims to federal healthcare programs in connection with telemedicine health care fraud schemes.

Patient Recruiter Found Guilty in $1.3 Million Medicare Kickback Scheme
A federal jury in Detroit, Michigan found a patient recruiter guilty today for his role in a scheme involving approximately $1.3 million in fraudulent Medicare claims for home health care that were procured through the payment of kickbacks.

Medical Business Owner Sentenced to More Than 10 Years in Federal Prison for Medicare Fraud
AUGUSTA, GA: The owner of a Thomson, Ga., medical equipment company was sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison Tuesday, July 30, for a wide-ranging Medicare fraud scheme.

Millcreek Community Hospital Will Pay $2,451,000 to Settle Claims for Medically Unnecessary Inpatient Rehabilitation Services
PITTSBURGH – Millcreek Community Hospital, located in Erie, Pennsylvania, has agreed to pay $2,451,000 to resolve claims that the hospital violated the False Claims Act by billing Medicare and Medicaid for medically unnecessary inpatient rehabilitation services, Scott W. Brady announced today.

32 Arrested Major Drug Bust San Francisco

Posted on August 8, 2019August 8, 2019 by Denise Simon

Attention to AOC, Booker, Castro, Biden, O’Rourke and the rest…remember when President Trump said they dont send us their best? Check it, mostly Hondurans.
Hey Pelosi, hey Feinstein, what say you? Maybe someone can alert Shepard Smith too.

Fentanyl…..

U.S. Attorney David Anderson announces a new federal crime-fighting initiative in San Francisco on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019. Seventeen federal law enforcement agencies will team up for a yearlong crackdown on a notorious area of San Francisco where open drug use has been tolerated for years. (AP Photo/Samantha Maldonado) photo

The alleged leaders of the two organizations were Andy Reanos-Moreno and Eduardo Alfonso Viera-Chirinos, according to federal criminal complaints filed on Aug. 1 and July 29 and made public Wednesday.

Nielsen said the two cases were the first time in his law enforcement experience that he had seen the model of the leaders of a drug ring renting housing to the drug sellers.

The residences included apartments and houses in Oakland, Hayward and elsewhere and as many as five dealers, sometimes with partners and children, lived in each unit, according to the complaints.

In part: (AP) — The first step in a sweeping crackdown on crime ranging from drugs to sex trafficking in a notorious San Francisco neighborhood yielded 32 arrests of mostly Honduran nationals tied to two international operations that poured heroin and cocaine into the community, U.S. prosecutors announced Wednesday.

In his first news conference since being appointed by President Donald Trump in January, U.S. Attorney David Anderson said he could no longer stand by as tourists, government workers and residents wade through a daily slog of crime. He said an enforcement initiative by more than 15 federal agencies would not affect “innocent” homeless people or drug users but would tackle high-level drug dealing, fraud, identity theft and firearms.

“My belief is that the Tenderloin, in fairness, deserves the rule of law every bit as much as other fine neighborhoods in San Francisco,” he said. “This is not an immigration initiative. This is not a deportation initiative. This is a public safety initiative.”

Still, San Francisco is a city that strongly opposes federal immigration sweeps, and immigration agents are among those joining the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals Service and others in the effort. San Francisco was a sanctuary city before the rest of California largely pledged not to work with federal authorities on deporting people in the country illegally.

Chris Nielsen, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, said an investigation launched in late 2017 uncovered two independent operations stretching from Mexico to Seattle in which mostly Honduran nationals living on the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay Area commuted daily to the Tenderloin to sell drugs.

He said the “commuter drug dealers” acted like “independent contractors,” selling drugs in exchange for housing.

“Each morning, drugs were dropped off with dealers in the East Bay and then commuted into the city to sell to people from all over the area,” he said.

The federal crackdown, however, was criticized by San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness, whose officials say the Trump administration is targeting immigrants and the poor. “We are deeply concerned that low level offenders, drug users and individuals who do not have homes and are therefore more likely to come in contact with law enforcement will be disparately impacted,” said Sam Lew, the coalition’s policy director.

Others say the neighborhood desperately needs help. Andrea Fogelbach opened her “Slingshot Cafe” coffee shop two months ago in the neighborhood, where discarded needles litter the streets and people sleep in tents or out in the open.

“It’s pretty bad. They’re just shooting up right in front of you,” she said. “I’m afraid for my dog stepping on needles most of the time. If I had children, I don’t think I could live here.”

The organized nature of drug peddling in the Tenderloin was cited in an April city report, which stated that more than half of nearly 900 people booked into jail or cited for incidents tied to drug sales in 2017-18 were cited or arrested by police in the Tenderloin. It said a high percentage of drug sales involve organized crime and “sellers often give drugs to homeless people who are addicted in exchange” for holding the drugs.

The U.S. attorney’s office said it is devoting 15 prosecutors to the crackdown for at least a year.

Gangs Use of Emojis in Text Messages

Posted on August 7, 2019August 7, 2019 by Denise Simon

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In part: “I’ll see a string of pictures, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know what that means,'” she said.

Donna Price said that’s exactly what gang members want to hear.

Price was part of the Street Safe Task Force established by former North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue and worked closely with gang prevention coordinators. Price said gangs are using what look like innocent emojis in social media posts as hidden messages to recruit, communicate with one another and threaten rivals.

“There are about 1,200 emojis out there, and those emojis can each mean four different meanings,” Price said.

Maxwell asked Foston what she thinks the gas pump emoji means.

“They need gas,” Foston answered. “They’re at an old-school gas station and they’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Not always. Some use that emoji as a symbol for gang. They may add the emoji “A” and emoji “NG” to erase any doubt.

Or they’ll use a cluster of emojis, like the one below. It means “Do you have any weed?”

The emoji combo of a man running and scissors is a threat to cut or stab someone.

“This is like taking it to the next level,” Foston said. “That’s scary.”

Detective Al Smith of the Violent Crimes and Gang Unit in Burlington said that the emoji communication code started with gangs in the western and northern parts of the country.

“They like to share everything. It’s a common trend with gangs,” Smith said.

Maxwell looked at the Twitter feed of a well-known Chicago gang member and found the gas pump emojis and others with multiple meanings, along with plenty of threats.

That gang member was killed three years ago.

“The trend is, by the time we find out about it, they have either used it or have moved on to something else,” said Smith.

That’s where things can get complicated. The alternative meanings of the emojis change often, because gangs know that investigators are on to them. Different gangs use the emojis in different ways, so it can be tough for police, and parents, to break the code, which is why Price said parents have to make the effort to know what the pictures mean.

“It’s like music and technology,” said Price. “You have to stay up on it all the time.”

“I have to tell them (my children) all the time, ‘It’s not necessarily you,’” Foston said. “’It’s the people around you. And I don’t know everybody that you communicate with or talk to.’”

*** BTW, as a warning: Parents beware: Kids are using this secret emoji language

In the secret code of New York gangs, texting two thumbs up doesn’t mean everything is OK.

It means you’re a member of the Harlem Crips, a ruthless band of hoodlums who have terrorized upper Manhattan for decades, according to police.

They say violent city street toughs have turned to cutesy emoji and other digital imagery to communicate with each other, using seemingly innocuous symbols as tools of murder, assault, rape and robbery.

“Social media is something the juveniles and youth are constantly using,” said NYPD Sgt. Leo Nugent of the Bronx Gang Squad, noting that the gas pump has become a universal symbol for “gang.”

“If I’m in a gang mode, I’ll put that up,” he said.

The Crips opt for the two thumbs-up emoji, with the knuckles facing each other, because they resemble the letter “H.”

Their longstanding rivals, the Bloods, signal their affiliation with an image of a magician’s top hat.

They even go after each other with emoji, posting other gangs’ symbols upside down as a sign of disrespect.

And they livestream video from their opponents’ turf on Snapchat, a type of taunting known as “cyberbanging.”

Gangs have learned to avoid Facebook, which police have scoured for years for evidence used to lock up suspected leaders.

“They call Facebook ‘Fedbook’ now, because if you talk on Facebook, the feds will be monitoring,” Nugent said.

Gangbangers now prefer WhatsApp, CoverMe, Kik Messenger and Yubo — a dating app marketed to teens — where their messages quickly disappear, making it harder for cops to track them, according to lawmen.

“They’re pretty smart,” said Detective Belinda Delgado, also with the Bronx Gang unit. “WhatApp — the minute you delete it from your phone, it disappears.”

Messages sent in chat apps are not visible to the public, so there’s no way for cops to monitor conversations.

Nugent said gangs are using emoji to recruit new members and to demand they commit crimes.

He said gangs might order new members to run a credit card or check scam, using digital symbols of a man running, a money bag and a credit card.

“Members we have identified will ask for anyone who is 18 and over and who has a valid ID to private message them,” Delgado said.

Gang activity is also carried out on gaming consoles, according to Nugent.

In one robbery, a Crip set up a purported cellphone sale while chatting via PlayStation. When the victim showed up, someone pulled a gun on him and robbed him, Nugent said.

“In these chats sometimes people sell items, sneakers, headphones or cellphones, etc.,” Nugent said. “The gamers can pull up pictures of each other, so they know who they are communicating with.”

Police rely heavily on confidential informants (CIs) to fill them in on gang methods, according to Delgado.

“A CI who says, ‘Hey, our set uses Snapchat, and we communicate there when we have meetings’ . . . when we have a problem he gets us the screenshots.

“Without a court order, we can not monitor in real-time.”

The NYPD has enlisted parents to monitor potential gang activity on social media, and teaches them what to look for at gang-awareness seminars.

“I can’t go to every kid and look through his phone, but the parent can,” Nugent said.

Police said teens with big social-media followings should be a red flag for parents.

“If your kid has 3,000-5,000 friends — that could be a problem if you live in a certain neighborhood,” Nugent said.

Waivers? China Pharmaceuticals Killing Americans

Posted on August 5, 2019August 5, 2019 by Denise Simon

Primer:

Image result for chinese pharmaceuticals
In part from Reuters: “My friend President Xi said that he would stop the sale of fentanyl to the United States – this never happened and many Americans continue to die,” Trump said in a tweet.

“We’re losing thousands of people to fentanyl,” he later told reporters.

The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fentanyl is an opioid painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin, and has a central role in the devastating U.S. opioid crisis. In the United States, fentanyl and all of its analogues are controlled substances subject to strict regulation.

More than 28,000 synthetic opioid-related overdose deaths, mostly from fentanyl related substances, were recorded in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Added from Bloomberg:

China has become the world’s largest supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients, or API, providing key components to drugmakers worldwide. But a yearlong recall of tainted heart drugs taken by millions of Americans is prompting U.S. national security officials to ask whether China’s growing role in the pharmaceutical supply chain could pose a threat to the health of military personnel.

“The national security risks of increased Chinese dominance of the global API market cannot be overstated,” Christopher Priest, the acting deputy assistant director for health care operations and Tricare for the Defense Health Agency, told a U.S.-China advisory panel last week in Washington.

The Defense Health Agency manages much of the health care of military members, including prescription drugs.

Concerns about the safety and efficacy of Chinese-made drugs are rising at a time of heightened trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. Last week, Trump unveiled plans for new tariffs on Chinese goods; China plans to halt imports of U.S. crops in response. The yuan sank on Monday against the dollar.

The National Security Council is looking into Chinese drug manufacturing and trying to identify the most at-risk medications, Priest told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington, without elaborating. The National Security Council declined to comment.

The Defense Health Agency is supposed to use drugs that comply with the Trade Agreements Act, a 1979 law that requires many federal purchases to be made in the U.S. or another compliant country. China isn’t on the approved list, but the agency has waivers for almost 150 drugs they otherwise wouldn’t be able to procure, Priest said. The TAA covers only finished products, not their components.

Many drugs taken by military members and civilians have active ingredients made in China. While drugmakers typically don’t disclose where every molecule in a pill comes from, the recall of contaminated blood-pressure drugs has shown that many of their active components originated in Chinese factories.

Rocket Fuel

Larry Wortzel, a member of the U.S.-China commission and a military retiree, said four of his blood-pressure medications were recalled in three months. Wortzel’s pills, versions of a drug called valsartan, were manufactured in India but had active ingredients from China.

“They were contaminated with rocket fuel,” Wortzel said. “I imagine active people have the same problem. This affects the readiness of our troops.”

The recalled valsartan contained a probable carcinogen known as NDMA, a manufacturing byproduct once used to make rocket fuel and also found in grilled and cured meats.

Priest called the recalls “a never-ending saga” and a “wake-up call.”

The recalls began in July 2018 with valsartan made by China’s Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has largely blamed the company’s manufacturing process for creating the NDMA, which went undetected for as long as four years. Drugmakers in other countries who used similar processes have also had to recall blood-pressure pills.

Some valsartan purchased by the Defense Logistics Agency and later recalled was TAA-compliant, said Patrick Mackin, a spokesman for the DLA. The agency manages the supply chain for the U.S. military, including ensuring pharmaceuticals make their way to military treatment facilities. With valsartan in shortage, according to the FDA, the agency sought a TAA waiver for valsartan on July 15, Mackin said.

A Bloomberg investigation this year detailed doubts among U.S. health officials about the data generic-drug companies, including Zhejiang Huahai and others involved in the valsartan recalls, use to prove their products are safe and effective.

“We wouldn’t have our aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines built in China, and for very important medications, we really should look at what it takes to purchase based on value not just price,” Rosemary Gibson, the author of the book “China Rx,” told the commission. “We want cheap, we can buy cheap. But what’s missing from the whole equation is quality.”

Shortage Fears

Quality isn’t the only concern. Shortages could also arise from attempts by the Chinese to cut off supply, particularly amid the U.S.-China trade standoff.

“If China shut the door on exports, our hospitals would cease to function, so this has tremendous urgency,” Gibson said.

Priest said pharmaceutical companies should be compelled, using the buying power of the entire federal government, to maintain the infrastructure to make drugs without relying on countries like China.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating the FDA’s ability to police foreign manufacturing. The committee’s leaders asked the agency for more information on the valsartan recall in June, including about a dispute between senior officials and an agency inspector who raised red flags at Zhejiang Huahai more than a year before the NDMA was detected. The panel also asked the Government Accountability Office to look at the FDA’s oversight of foreign drug manufacturing.

“Shame on us for not paying attention to something so critical and assuming, which has been the orthodoxy for a long time, that the industry would regulate itself,” Benjamin Shobert, senior associate for international health at The National Bureau of Asian Research, told the commission.

Defamation Laws v. President Trump

Posted on August 5, 2019August 5, 2019 by Denise Simon

The El Paso shooter left a 4 page manifesto laying out his political and society position(s) on several topics including the Hispanic invasion. He also addressed fake news and that Trump did not have anything to do with his evil decisions to go on a killing rampage. So, Cloudflare fired one of it’s customers, 8Chan. The shooter’s manifesto was posted on 8Chan. A cyber site known as ZDNet among others reporting the termination of 8Chan had it the subtitle the following: “8Chan has harbored a community of hate” (in part). No argument there.

Okay, yet consider the words ‘harbored a community of hate’. In a review of media and politicians, it is beyond dispute that they too have harbored a community of hate.

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Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris often has called President Trump a ‘predator‘.

Senator Cory Booker declared on Meet the Press that Trump is responsible for El Paso shooting.

Mayor Pete Buttigeig along with Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro and others have said the same thing. These politicians created the phrase ‘white nationalism’ to describe Trump and Trump supporters.

Bernie Sanders too? Yes.

While being one of the moderators of the Democrat debate, Don Lemon of CNN twice called Trump a racist. Not to be left out is the New York Times and for sure the Washington Post.

So we have yet another ‘community of hate’ and is anyone challenging these politicians or media to look inward and ask if they are complicit is all this?

So, what about defamation laws? Glad you asked. Consider the following:

What is Defamation?

Defamation is a common law tort, governed by state law, in which an individual makes a “publication” of a defamatory statement of and concerning the plaintiff that damages the reputation of the plaintiff. Defamation comes in two forms: slander and libel. Slander involves the oral “publication” of a defamatory remark that is heard by another, which injures the subject’s reputation or character. Libel is the written “publication” of a defamatory remark that has the tendency to injure another’s reputation or character.

What are the elements of a cause of action for defamation?

The elements of a defamation suit; whether slander or libel, are:

1. A defamatory statement;

2. Published to a third party;

3. Which the speaker knew or should have known was false;

4. That causes injury to the subject of the communication

So, just how many are really creating more hate and division and the manifestation of this into the full landscape of domestic tranquility or the that matter even when it comes to global relations between the United States and countries across the world?

Active shooters and deadly ambushes on soft targets where very innocent people die is the result of all this high octane rhetoric by some many. Evil pulled the trigger(s). Evil is a form of mental defect. See something say something? Okay, that does often work when it comes to public safety and nabbing criminals. Great. Yet here is another suggestion for a layered approach. How about the cyber wing of our government, suggesting the NSA create a search algorithm that searches online sites including dark parts of the web like that of 8Chan to flush out evil as spelled out in the El Paso shooter’s manifesto? Google, Facebook and Twitter all created and apply these kinds of software tactics. Suggesting the NRA is to blame is without basis, suggesting Trump is to blame is without basis, suggesting that white nationalism is to blame is without basis.

There is no single cure to this community of hate. There must be a layered approach, so having a cogent summit and plan is suggested. After the Parkland shooting, the Trump White House did host a summit and several approaches were suggested including a state by state Red Flag law system to keep schools safe.

How do you legislate away hate that may turn deadly? You don’t but politicians and media must become introspective in this community of hate.

For more consideration is the recent item published by the LA Times. In part:

For two years, we’ve been studying the life histories of mass shooters in the United States for a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. We’ve built a database dating back to 1966 of every mass shooter who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces, and places of worship since 1999. We’ve interviewed incarcerated perpetrators and their families, shooting survivors and first responders. We’ve read media and social media, manifestos, suicide notes, trial transcripts and medical records.

Our goal has been to find new, data-driven pathways for preventing such shootings. Although we haven’t found that mass shooters are all alike, our data do reveal four commonalities among the perpetrators of nearly all the mass shootings we studied.

First, the vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying. The trauma was often a precursor to mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, thought disorders or suicidality.

Second, practically every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting. They often had become angry and despondent because of a specific grievance. For workplace shooters, a change in job status was frequently the trigger. For shooters in other contexts, relationship rejection or loss often played a role. Such crises were, in many cases, communicated to others through a marked change in behavior, an expression of suicidal thoughts or plans, or specific threats of violence.

Third, most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. People in crisis have always existed. But in the age of 24-hour rolling news and social media, there are scripts to follow that promise notoriety in death. Societal fear and fascination with mass shootings partly drives the motivation to commit them. Hence, as we have seen in the last week, mass shootings tend to come in clusters. They are socially contagious. Perpetrators study other perpetrators and model their acts after previous shootings. Many are radicalized online in their search for validation from others that their will to murder is justified.

Fourth, the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans. Once someone decides life is no longer worth living and that murdering others would be a proper revenge, only means and opportunity stand in the way of another mass shooting. Is an appropriate shooting site accessible? Can the would-be shooter obtain firearms? In 80% of school shootings, perpetrators got their weapons from family members, according to our data. Workplace shooters tended to use handguns they legally owned. Other public shooters were more likely to acquire them illegally. Go here for the full article.