A few weeks back we welcomed John Goodman as a contributor at THCB. His first column was more than a tad critical of me for impugning the ethics of Harvard Business School Prof Regina Herzlinger. Herzlinger, you may recall made a boatload of money off her position on the board of directors of Wellcare. Wellcare was operating a Medicaid and Medicare HMO in Florida, while basically using that not-too-sacred trust as an excuse to defraud the taxpayer.
Due to the demands of reality cutting into my work-life, my blow-by-blow analysis of Wellcare’s bad behavior has waned a little, but here I instead commend to you the consistently great work of Roy Poses over at Health Care Renewal. Earlier this month Roy took a look at the latest chapter in the tawdry tale. I encourage you to read his article for the full tale, but essentially even despite the settling of the criminal and civil charges for theft of around $46m, there’s a brand new set of charges from the same period—this time theft is alleged of up to $600 million. This new set of allegations were collected by (FBI informant & Wellcare financial analyst) Sean Hellein who wore a wire for more than a year, and probably stands to make a packet in the qui tam suit.
And not that I’d further besmirch the reputation of Prof. Herzlinger, but the time period all this happened was while she was still on the board, and none of these were given as her expressed reasons for leaving. Then it struck me, is Regi in on the qui tam suit too? That would be the way to make serious money out of her insider knowledge.
Filed Under: Health Plans, Matthew Holt
Jul 12, 2010
