Insurance companies have started hiring doctors with long histories of medical malpractice claims against them to DENY claims of their policy holders. Most of the major insurance companies in this country are using doctors that have dismal records to tell YOU that your prescriptions or medical procedures won’t be covered by insurance. Also, billionaires have decided that buying politicians isn’t enough, so they’ve started buying off judges. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Insurance companies have started hiring doctors with long, long histories of medical malpractice. They hire ’em to deny claims. That’s why they’re doing it. Most of the major insurance companies in this country are using doctors that have dismal records to tell you that your prescription or your medical procedures just aren’t gonna be covered by insurance. What a scam. Again, who comes through on this, Lever?
Farron Cousins: ProPublica.
Mike Papantonio: No. ProPublica.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And this was actually said to me by a medical malpractice attorney, and she was absolutely stunned by what’s going on here. Because we have these doctors who not only have millions of dollars in malpractice lawsuits, many of them have been disciplined. They’ve been busted for fraud. We’re talking real criminal behavior. And now they’re working for hundreds of thousands a year for insurance companies saying, no, don’t cover this procedure for this patient.
Mike Papantonio: The worst part about it is the people doing this, for example, you may have a podiatrist that’s close to losing their license. They’ve been sued for malpractice, whatever it may be. Anesthesiologist, they’ve been sued for malpractice. They can’t really carry on a practice. So they go to work for $400,000 with these companies. And the part, the podiatrist is telling a cardiologist, no, you can’t allow this treatment to take place. There’s no, they’re not even in the same field. They have no idea what that cardiologist is trying to tell the podiatrist. It’s just automatic denial. About 10,000 a month for some of them. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, they go through these things, rapid fire, because obviously the less you cover, the less the insurance company pays. So there’s big incentives, by the way, for these doctors, even with their horrible histories, they couldn’t get a job at a free clinic because they’re so bad with the malpractice that yeah, hey, you deny a certain number of claims, you’re gonna get a big bonus this year. Your base pay is $400,000, but we may throw in a couple extra hundred thousand depending on how much money you save us. And so these doctors that have no business practicing, they’re dealing with areas, like you said, that are outside of their expertise. A hundred percent. And they’re just looking on paper and saying yes or no.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve talked about this before, but first of all, let me clarify something, you know, it’s less than 2% of the doctors that create all the malpractice. That’s a startling number. Less than 2% create all the malpractice in the medical field. I think that’s a startling number. But we’ve talked about the idea that once Wall Street started buying up these small doctor run hospitals, you’d have these small towns where you’d have 10 doctors that owned the hospital, and they’re invested in that hospital in every sense of the word. They want things to go well. They want good patient care. Wall Street saw that, hey, this is a big profit center for us. So they started buying, just buying ’em up by the dozens, all over the country. Now they control 80% of the hospital healthcare out there. Wall Street does. So the cats that hire these people who have malpractice histories that are gonna say anything, anything the insurance company wants ’em to say to the tune of, I saw a report 10,000 a month. Some of these doctors are doing 10,000 denials a month. And so, yeah, for the right money and as you say, hey, throw in a bonus. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And to your point also about the hospitals buying up the, or Wall Street buying up the hospitals, the hospitals then buy up all the local doctors.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So you can’t find an independent physician anymore. They’re saying, oh no, I’m a part of this medical group. So they do all the billing. They take all the pressure off me. But no, what they’re really doing is becoming part of this conglomerate that, again, is also in some instances, partnered at the hip with the insurance company telling us, no, you can’t have this. No, you can’t have this prescription. No, that surgery for a deviated septum, that’s mostly cosmetic. So we’re not gonna.
Mike Papantonio: Or experimental, or we don’t.
Farron Cousins: Right. It’s ridiculous. Look, they gave me issues about covering my carpal tunnel surgery. And this is what we’re dealing with because healthcare is so privatized.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s Wall Street, is controlled by Wall Street. When you have to call Wall Street to see if you can have heart surgery, which happens, happens repeatedly. We get calls here all the time. They say, look, I gotta have this procedure done or they say that I have two years to live. And they’ll call and say, we gotta get this done. And oh no, that’s experimental. We can’t put any money behind that. It’s the worst of the worst. And anytime you have Wall Street involved, you’re gonna have the worst. They’re trying to do this with the legal field. You’re seeing these law firms that are national law firms, Wall Street’s trying to do the same thing. They tried to buy us. I mean, you know, ridiculous. But the point is this, that’s their MO. Find out where the money is and then go and take advantage of everything you can with that industry. Whether it’s the dental industry. You’re seeing these dental clinics come up everywhere. Massive dental clinics. Optometrists, massive optometry. And the kids coming outta school it’s a pretty good deal. You’re coming through medical school. You owe $500,000. And so rather than going out there and hanging up your license and saying, I’m gonna start my own practice, just go, you know, go with the hospital. Go with these corporation groups, and it’s all become corporate and this is what’s happening with it.
Mike Papantonio: Billionaires have decided that buying politicians isn’t enough. So they’ve started buying off judges. These wealthy donors are sending judges all over the globe to attend to their education. Well, judges have learned that they have to play ball sometimes in order to get these great trips. I got a couple of varied signs to the way this is developing because I’m in front of judges all the time. But give me your take on this. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Again, another great report from the Lever here. And they went through and they analyzed the financial disclosures of these judges across the board. Left, right, center, doesn’t matter what the judge was or who appointed the judge, these billionaire backed groups, it’s not about a political agenda, it’s about a corporate agenda. And they are sending them all over the world in some cases because they put on these continuing education seminars. Where you gotta do these courses as judges and what it is, is it’s pro corporate propaganda, 100%. And they’re in all these places where you wanna go. You want a vacation. They have you in for three hours, then you’re free to play golf or do whatever.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. The places that are doing this, Duke University is a great example. They started, well, this was put together. What this story misses, I think to some degree, is big law firms are the money behind this. Okay. Your biggest defense firms that all they do is defend corporations, they’ll call Duke and Duke bought into this big time. Duke is like a haven for conservative thought where it comes to the practice of law. They bring in all these defense lawyers, then they bring in judges and defense lawyers compared to claimants lawyers, are about 10 to one. So the judges are hearing for four days about how horrible things are out there. But it’s the court. See, that’s what this story kind of misses. And this is really a well done story, don’t get me wrong. But the whole push now is the economics of law. Okay. That’s their big push with these really conservative judges. I would like to tell you that it’s just conservative judges that are the problem. Some of the worst judges I have been in front of come from Democratic appointments. And we say, oh, well that’s gotta be, Democrat appointment. We’re gonna be. But no, it’s not. But people don’t understand why that is. The Democrat appointment, just like the Republican appointment has come up through the defense industry. Okay. All they’ve ever done is represented corporate interest against consumers. I can’t go into the details about it, but the last awful, just ridiculous decision, overwhelming information that the corporation had done wrong. But when you looked at her analysis of things, it was all about the economics, you know? Well, yeah, we’ve killed some people. But sometimes that’s just the cost of doing business. That is emanating not just from the Federalist Society, but from the biggest defense firms, Williams and Connolly types in this country that are, they’re creating these havens. Duke is one of ’em. There’s several more, aren’t there?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And of course, the usual suspects are the two. You’ve got the Koch network that is funding some of these junkets, the Federalist Society, as you mentioned. But really what this is, is this is almost a legal form of bribery. Right. There’s no restrictions on this. There’s nothing illegal being alleged at all. But these judges know, this is an expression I’ve heard you say before, you dance with who brought you.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And that is exactly what these judges do. They say, well, okay, I’ve got this case in front of me now, but golly, they, actually just paid. It was a gorgeous trip we took down to Europe. It was great. So, we look at this, they did some bad things, but is it worth punishing them $500 million? And that’s where it comes in. It’s not necessarily always ruling against the plaintiffs. But reducing those damages to where the company still makes huge profits.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’s still, well, it’s a business decision. They make $10 billion and have to pay out $1 billion where they know from the very word go that the product that they were selling was gonna kill people. I mean, there’s no question. And I’m on these panels with these defense lawyers and judges, and it’s always stacked. It’s like 10 to one. And so that’s the way it’s designed. And like I say, Duke is the worst. It is the worst about buying into the idea, bring in all these defense lawyers, have ’em overwhelming the federal judges that are there. But I don’t really see, day to day, I gotta tell you, I don’t see a big difference. I know that probably shocks everybody. But I don’t see a big difference where it comes to the Democratic appointment or the Republican appointment. I mean, that it’s startling. You see some difference. But the variations of what I’m seeing right now with some of these Democratic judges that we thought, oh, this is gonna be a great judge because he came from a big defense, corporate defense firm, and he gave a lot of money to say Obama. And then Obama makes the appointment and Obama loses touch with the idea that this corporate defense lawyer is still a corporate defense lawyer. He just has a black robe on.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They’ll be good on the social issue side of things. But when it comes to holding corporations accountable.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, forget it.
Farron Cousins: They’re all the same.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Forget it.
