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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (616969)	9/2/2004 8:00:34 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Respond to of 769667

Well, I guess that the Democrats are gonna have to have some sleezebag write a book about how Bush ducked from Vietnam and then had operatives scour his records to cover his coke bust. Then, fund a group to show ads that Kerry has no connection to. They can call the group Drunken Stateside Sons of Privilege for Plausible Denialability. Only then will the Democrats achieve true Roveism.

To: TideGlider who wrote (616969)	9/2/2004 8:21:21 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769667

Doctors Sue HMOs: Doctors' HMO suit gets class status By Laura Gilcrest, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 4:02 PM ET Sept. 2, 2004 cbs.marketwatch.com{0C0114DF-057E-4049-B657-51A22EF68BFF}&siteid=mktw WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- A federal appeals court has granted class-action status to a lawsuit brought by thousands of physicians suing health maintenance organizations over their reimbursement practices. At stake in the case, the first of its kind, are billions of dollars and a potentially stinging indictment of the way HMOs and other managed care organizations do business. The suit, representing 28 U.S. medical societies, gets under way in federal district court in Miami next March, according to Archie Lamb, lead attorney for the plaintiffs. The class-action challenge is based on charges that six HMOs, including giants such as United Health (UNH: news, chart, profile) and WellPoint Health Networks (WLP: news, chart, profile), conspired to deny or delay reimbursement payments to doctors in violation of the federal antiracketeering statute, Lamb said. The plaintiffs are seeking in excess of about $3 billion, a sum that would be tripled under the so-called RICO racketeering law, he added. The defendant HMOs had fought class-action certification on a number of grounds, according to Lamb, including that the large number of plaintiffs made the case unmanageable and that a favorable award would mean financial ruin. The defendants in the case include United Health Group, WellPoint Health Networks, Health Net, PacifiCare Health Systems (PHS: news, chart, profile), Humana (HUM: news, chart, profile) and Prudential. Despite their setback on the class-action issue in Wednesday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, the health firms said they remained optimistic about the case's merits. "Ultimately, with respect to these federal claims, we are confident that we will win at trial based on both the heightened standard of proof and the evidence," said Kent Jarrell, an official with APCO Worldwide and spokesman for the insurers, in a statement. Jarrell was referring to the appeal court's observation that the RICO statute requires a strict showing that the defendants engaged in intentional acts and intentional conspiracy to commit those acts. While court proceedings on the case's merits are months away, the lawsuit's class-action status is nonetheless for Lamb a "vindication" of physicians' simmering battle with managed care companies. "That's why doctors are so enthused" over the appeals court's decision, he said. For years, some physicians have charged that managed care companies have denied them rightful payment for services rendered, and that HMOs' power to withhold payments even interferes with their ability to make sound treatment decisions for patients. Yet doctors have been "thwarted at every turn" and "called greedy," Lamb added. The lawsuit charges that HMOs use software programs that automatically reduce higher-cost medical services to a lower payment category, or fail to "recognize" a higher-cost service's code, thereby denying or delaying payment, according to Lamb. Wednesday's ruling, he said, "says that these claims are legitimate, credible and need to go to a jury." © 1997-2004 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.