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Politics : Inhalin' with Palin !! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brander who wrote (192)	9/30/2008 8:55:54 AM
From: Arthur Radley	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 358

Morning Brad...I thought you had gone on vacation, so it is good to see you around. Concerning Columbia and the Texas dude...I left that part out on purpose. But since that is on the table I will update that part of the sordid story. The Texas dude is Richard Rainwater, the 'rain-maker' from Ft. Worth. The same Rainwater that by some strange miracle sought out an investor in a project, an investor that had turned gold into dust with every deal he had been involved. But still Rainwater brought him into a deal that ultimately made the individual a multi-millionaire.And who was this mystery man that got in on the Texas Ranger baseball team with a paltry amount of money from stock he sold in Harken Oil just before it announced that their future was shaky...aka..bailing before sharing horrible news to non-insiders.......that person being George W. Bush. 1) The Frist entity was Hospital Corporation of America. 2) Rainwater founded Columbia. 3) Hospital Corporation and Columbia did merge. 4) As for Frist selling his stake, I'm not sure about that. I think it was placed in a trust and then there was a question about when he unloaded it from the trust. I will have to check on that issue. 5) The point of my message to IJ was that hospitals and insurance companies are taking excessive amounts out for CEO compensation, and I think you would agree that they use every gambit to deny paying their claims..thus impacting you doctors!

To: Brander who wrote (192)	9/30/2008 9:34:18 AM
From: Arthur Radley	1 Recommendation Respond to of 358

washingtonpost.com Senator Sold Stock Before Price Dropped Shares Fell Two Weeks Later By Jonathan M. Katz Associated Press Wednesday, September 21, 2005; A03 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent. Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist. Frist's shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares, and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said. HCA shares peaked at midyear, climbing to $58.22 a share on June 22. After slipping slightly for two weeks, the price fell to $49.90 on July 13 after the company announced its quarterly earnings would not meet analysts' expectations. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.76. The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million. Blind trusts are used to avoid conflicts of interest. Assets are turned over to a trustee who manages them without divulging any purchases or sales and reports only the total value and income earned to the owner. To keep the trust blind, Frist was not allowed to know how much HCA stock he owned, Call said, but he was allowed to ask for all of it to be sold. Frist, a surgeon first elected to the Senate in 1994, had been criticized for maintaining the holdings while dealing with legislation affecting the medical industry and managed care. Call said the Senate Select Committee on Ethics has found nothing wrong with Frist's holdings in the company in a blind trust. "To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, Senator Frist went beyond what ethics requires and sold the stock," Call said. Asked why he had not done so before, she said, "I don't know that he's been worried about it in the past." An HCA spokesman said the company had no part in Frist's decision. Frist's father, Thomas, founded the company, and his brother, Thomas Jr., is a director and leading stockholder. The family is worth $1.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. HCA -- formerly known as Columbia HCA Healthcare Corp. -- has been a top contributor to the senator's campaigns, donating $83,450 since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The sale of the shares was first reported by Congressional Quarterly.