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"You OK to drive, Jen?" Elizabeth asked. "No, even without the wine I'm not... sorry, I shouldn't have...." "It's all right. I'll drive you. We can bring you back for your car later." Jennifer rode with Elizabeth to Harry's office, Jessica and Alex followed. Mary Ann was there, and Harry asked her to join them. He introduced Elizabeth and Jennifer and they went to Harry's office. "Mary Ann," Harry said, "we were talking about doctors. This Copeland seems to be the only common factor. Are you seeing any other doctors in the records?" "Not associated with the hospital," she replied. "Occasionally I see another name, could be a doctor or not, but from somewhere off-premises." "I don't suppose you got the records for your brother." Harry said to Jennifer. "No, I wasn't thinking of needing them then." "Get them. They'll probably charge you for them, probably a couple hundred. Most hospitals don't, but they do. If money's a problem, don't worry about it, we'll take care of it." "It's not a problem." "Get the ones from St. Bernards too. They're easy, just go in and identify yourself. They might give you some trouble since you're not him, but if you need to we'll have a lawyer deal with it." "Got it." "What we're going to do," Harry said, "is add your case to the ones we're working on, if you want us to. We don't need to be paid, that's being taken care of. It's part of a bigger operation. "I know there's nothing I can say, any of us can say, to change anything or stop you from hurting. But we're going to see this through, whatever it takes. This has to stop." Jennifer took a tissue from her purse and wiped her eyes. She holdin' up pretty well. Ain't got anyone to help. I should be mad, guess I am but some feelings don't register like they should. "Thanks. I was beginning to think no one cared." "Unfortunately, almost no one does. People these days, most of them, are too busy trying to keep their heads above water. Not just financially but in dealing with all the noise. Spending over half your life working for the government's not bad enough, you have so much other stuff to deal with. If you can't find a way to tune it out, it'll make you crazy if you let it. "We'll keep in touch, update you regularly. And if you need anything, just give us a call." "Thanks. I feel better already." "Do you live here in town?" asked Harry. "Yeah, over on Locust." "Off Southwest Drive?" Elizabeth asked. "Yeah." "I go home that way. I can drop you off. When do you have to be at work?" "I don't tomorrow. I took a couple of days off." "OK, I can take you home, pick you up tomorrow on my way to work and drive you by the club. I don't go in until one. Will that work?" "I'll tell Bill that's your car," Harry said. "He's the manager at the 501. He'll have security keep an eye on it overnight." "Thanks guys. As if I could thank you enough." "It's going to be all right," said Jessica, "or as right as it can be for now. You're one of us. Let's get our numbers in your phone." "Let me give you hand," Mary Ann said, taking out her phone. "Harry and I have them all in ours." She took Jennifer's and Elizabeth's phones and made the transfers. "OK, you're all good. Let me get you Harry's cards as well."
"What do you think?" Jessica asked after Elizabeth and Jennifer left. "I think this is getting crazy fast," replied Harry. "Damn, I dunno, I've seen crazy up close my whole life. In this business, you learn to expect it. I guess this ain't much different, just a different business. "Mostly I deal with local affairs. When I was with the State Police there was some interstate stuff, but we were dealing with the common crimes. Drugs, organized theft, things like that. "I suspect this reaches back to Texas, and that whole network. There's a master organization, with individual operators in the various regions." "Isn't that how the Mafia works?" asked Jessica. "Or whatever they call it these days." "That's what I'm thinking." replied Harry. "Medical Industry fraud is generally confined to a single entity, whether it's a single hospital, or a big organization like HCA a few years back. But either way, it's generally self-contained. If this is what I'm thinking, at least some of these operators are kind of like franchises." "HCA?" "Healthcare Corporation of America. Big outfit in Tennessee. A family of doctors, the old man started it, buying hospitals, got pretty big. At one time they owned the facility where ACCH is, which is why it closed - when they got busted they closed or sold off some of the less profitable hospitals. One of the younger ones was a US Senator. That kept the heat off for a while, and even when they got busted on one went to prison. Just some big fines and civil judgments." "The right connections." said Jessica. "Right. And it was entirely Medicare fraud. But at over a billion in fines, the actual take must have been considerable." "Why go after a little country hospital for a few million." Alex said. "Right. And HCA was a for-profit operation, so it wasn't as easy to hide things. Between that and being small-town operations, these guys fly under the radar." "So ACCH may be a pretty much on its own," Jessica said, "paying a percentage of its profits to CHC." "And doing business with them, and the other hospitals, and the suppliers. All in the family. And because they're all small operations - ACCH is one of the larger ones - they're under the radar. If the feds are going to investigate anyone, it'll be the big dogs. In the big cities." "So the prospects for getting them prosecuted are pretty slim?" asked Jessica. "Slim or none. And slim's done left town." "How do we take them down? Alex asked. "It looks like it's all on us." "Pretty much. I'm going to work on mapping all this out, so we have a coherent picture. See what Elizabeth comes up with. That'll be important. Because what we'll probably have to do is get a gutsy lawyer, pay him plenty, and get some cases into court with enough ammunition to win. "Only problem is they'll probably try to settle, and we want a trial. Even if we lose, which is unlikely. We'll see just how worried we can make them." "We may be able to contribute something more once we start getting contacts through the website," Jessica said. "I hope you're right. The more the better." "We'll let you get back to work then." |
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