Where is the Money Going?
Covered California Insurers Fined for Perpetually Lousy Doctor Directories
The DMHC fines were a result of its five-month survey, ending in May 2014, of how well Blue Shield and Anthem were serving the public. The Blue Shield survey found 18% of the 1,360 doctors called weren’t at the number listed by the insurance company and 8.8% said they weren’t really part of the Covered California network. The Anthem survey found 12.5% of the 3,272 doctors called weren’t at the number listed and 12.8% denied they were in the network. read more
JPMorgan Chase Coughs Up $100 Million to Settle California Credit Card Lawsuit
The illegally robo-signed sworn documents this time around were used as a basis for suing the 125,000 people plus another 30,000 lawsuits filed by third-parties. “Chase also made systematic calculation errors regarding the amounts owed, and sold ‘zombie debts’ to third-party debt-collectors that included accounts that were inaccurate, settled, discharged in bankruptcy, not owed, or otherwise not collectable,” the AG’s office said. Chase agreed not to do that anymore. read more
Innovation and Persistence Bring Over-Priced Rx Drugs to California
Charles Ornstein at ProPublica, using documents from the California Board of Pharmacy and the Delaware secretary of state’s office, described how the mail-order pharmacy Philidor Rx Prescriptions “used a backdoor approach” to circumvent the board and continued to deliver Valeant’s drugs to the state. The board accused the company in 2014 of making “false statements” about who owned and operated the company. read more
Edison Faces Fine of Less than Half the Max for Backroom San Onofre Talks with CPUC
Judge Darling could have recommended a fine of $41.8 million, but based her lower assessment on a number of mitigating factors. For one, “SCE understands the problem and is acting to reduce or eliminate it.” The “problem” is Edison holding private conversations about public matters with CPUC officials and not reporting it, as required by law. read more
Company Turned Urine Testing Into Bogus Quarter-Billion-Dollar Medicare Revenue Stream
Millennium is one of the largest urine drug testing companies in the world and it got there, in part, by testing senior citizens' urine for “angel dust” after they have been prescribed opioid pain medication. Seniors rarely test positive for the hallucinogenic phencyclidine hydrochloride. No one will be accused of a committing a crime and Millennium will still be allowed to bill Medicare for services. read more
Upon Review, the State Won’t Use Violent Offenders in Prison to Fight Fires
One week after California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) spokesman Bill Sessa told the Sacramento Bee and other media outlets about a plan to fill a shortfall in firefighting inmates by using violent offenders, the idea was temporarily shelved. “We need to rethink that,” Sessa told Bee reporter Jon Ortiz. read more
Brown Vetoes Bill to Help Students Ripped Off by Shuttered Corinthian Colleges
Governor Brown vetoed Assembly Bill 573, which would have helped 13,000 students who attended nearly two dozen campuses operated by Corinthian Colleges. The legislation would have restored up to two years of Cal Grant and National Guard Education Assistance awards, and provided $1.3 million to nonprofit community service organizations to help the students navigate the world of “federal and private loan discharge and other financial aid relief.” read more
U.S. Supreme Court Lays Off San Jose Pitch to Overturn Baseball Anti-Trust Exemption
The justices refused without comment this week to hear an appeal from San Jose officials who have been trying to wrest the Oakland A’s franchise from its Bay Area neighbor. Major League Baseball (MLB) resisted the move and beat back the argument that it had used illegal monopolistic power to have its way. The high court is fine with that kind of monopoly, as was the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in January read more
Unrepentant Auto Loan Company Pays Penalty, Agrees Not to Illegally Harass Borrowers
The bureau found that Westlake employed a number of illegal, and pretty despicable, tactics to collect money since at least 2010. They used a program called Skip Tracy on 137,000 accounts to fool telephone call-waiting systems with disguised aliases, pretending to be, among other things, a repo company demanding borrowers surrender their cars. They lied to borrowers about terms of loan extensions and changed due dates without consultation. read more
L.A. Domestic Violence Services Are Underfunded, “Disjointed and Inconsistent”
New York City spends 12 times as much as Los Angeles per capita on domestic violence, according to the audit. That includes shelters, education and intervention. In real dollars, L.A. spent $3.2 million in 2013-14 and New York spent $107.2 million. The New York Police Department (NYPD) has a unit dedicated to domestic violence, staffed with officers trained to handle it. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) does not. read more
LAUSD Recoups $6.4 Million from Apple, Lenovo in $1.3-Billion iPad Fiasco
he settlement, which still must be approved by the Board of Education, only addresses payments the district made for Pearson software used by both companies as part of the contract. Apple’s share of the settlement costs is $4.2 million. The FBI is still investigating the bidding process that landed Apple the deal to supply the district’s administrators, teachers and 640,000 students with iPads and software to prepare for new Common Core teaching and testing. read more
Loan Manager Tells How Bribes Brought Down La Jolla Bank in Crash
Martinez and other senior bank officers began issuing the loans to their favorite borrowers, known as “Friends of the Bank,” or FOBs, in 2004. They used fraudulent application loans and ignored the borrowers’ credit unworthiness to get the ball rolling. And when the FOBs couldn’t make their payments, they received follow-up loans to delay the inevitable. Taxpayers eventually picked up the $1-billion tab. read more
Spurned Yosemite Concessionaire Sues for Naming Rights at the Park
Delaware North of Buffalo, New York, didn’t get the contract in June and, true to its word, sued the government last week in U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The company alleged breach of contract, claiming the government wouldn’t compensate it for property it left behind—trademarks like the names of Ahwahnee Hotel, the Wawona Hotel, the Badger Pass ski area and Curry Village. read more
Oakland Sues Wells Fargo over Predatory Home Loans
The city of Oakland sued Wells Fargo this week in federal court, accusing the bank of predatory lending and discrimination, dating back to the bubble, in violation of the Fair Housing Act and California's Fair Employment and Housing Act. The city said the deplorable lending practices never stopped. read more
New Website Helps with Health Care Crapshoot to Determine Medical Quality and Costs
The results, so far, appear to be useful. But even Doris Peter, director of Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center, said the website was a “first step.” She told Kaiser Health News, “When it comes to health care cost and quality, it's really a black box for consumers. They don't know how much they're going to pay.” read more
French Castles Are as Cheap to Rent as S.F. Apartments
For $2,925 a month, a renter can live in Ringuette, a 7-bedroom, 2-bath castle on 200 acres in Region Aquitaine. This low-end castle (available on the Castle Rental Network) has a walled garden covered with vines, a swimming pool, a lovely courtyard and a spacious kitchen sporting a wood stove. It has a 200-year-old Taxodium and a bamboo forest. Or, for just $75 a month more, one can have a 400-square-foot studio apartment with a Murphy bed in Lower Haight. read more