California will recover 112 million for Medi Cal Program fraud.

Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that California will recover $112 million for its Medi-Cal program as part of a national settlement with Eli Lilly and Company for the unlawful off-label marketing of its anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa, which the company aggressively marketed for such unapproved uses such as treatment for depression, anxiety, irritability, disrupted sleep, nausea and gambling.

“This settlement means that Eli Lilly can no longer reap massive profits by aggressively marketing this drug for unapproved uses at the expense of state health care programs for seniors and the infirm,” Attorney General Brown said. “California’s Medi-Cal program will receive almost $112 million, which is more than welcome at a time when the state faces massive budget deficits.”

Eighteen percent of the $112 million recovered for the Medi-Cal program will go to relators (whistleblowers) – the remainder will be split between the State, which will receive $54 million and the federal government, which will receive $41 million.

Beginning in 2001, Eli Lilly launched a marketing campaign called “Viva Zyprexa!” which encouraged physicians to prescribe Zyprexa for children, adolescents, and dementia patients.

In October 2008, the California Attorney General entered a settlement with Eli Lilly over the Zyprexa marketing campaign. In his original complaint, Attorney General Brown alleged that Eli Lilly engaged in unfair and deceptive practices when it marketed Zyprexa for off-label uses and failed to adequately disclose the drug’s potential side effects (including diabetes and hyperglycemia) to healthcare providers.

Under this settlement, Eli Lilly agreed to change its marketing practices and to cease promotion of its off-label uses. Off-label uses are those not approved by the FDA when it approves the sale and use of a particular drug. Physicians are allowed to prescribe drugs for off-label uses, but federal law prohibits pharmaceutical manufacturers from marketing products for off-label uses.

The total settlement is $1.415 billion—the largest recovery in a health care fraud investigation in U.S. history. The settlement includes $800 million in civil damages to be paid to the States and $615 million as a result of criminal charges brought against the company for illegal marketing.

Although both California and the U.S. contribute 50% to the funding of the Medi-Cal program, California’s share is larger than the federal share due to the federal Deficit Reduction Act, which provides monetary incentives to states to use False Claims Acts to pursue Medicaid fraud.

Patriot Act. The date America change Security for Freedom,

This video shows clearly how September 11, 2001 change the way America view Ethnicities from Around the World specially muslims, Arabs and Hispanics violating their Civil rights to achieve the security of Americans giving up Freedom, Liberties, and Civil rights.

Persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, or punishment members of an ethnic minority by a majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity in majority-controlled territory is a Ethnic Cleansing.

Rising depression. Suicide rates for the Mortgage crisis. No Help at all for middle class americans.

Towards our leaders & institutions; they are naive beyond belief. Although being used, abused & oh so confused by their so-called leaders, big media and this one-sided economic system; they keep on chuging along still wanting to believe in the american dream they are sold every minute, every day.

The real whiners are that 1% of happy few plutocrats and their 90% + of the whole shabang. They are the ones we are bailing out. They are the ones constantly lobbying & begging for more deregulation & tax cuts. They are the welfare corporations slaughtering US's middle class and making them feel guilty about it too…

There’s this big squeeze on the nation’s workers, wages have been flat, health and pension benefits are getting worse, at the same time corporate profits have gone up very, very nicely. Employee productivity has gone up 15, 20 percent, yet wages have been flat, plus companies are pressuring workers, you know, to work harder and harder.

And that’s part of a broader health crisis in the nation, where, since the year 2000, even though we’ve had pretty good economic times until the last few years under the Bush Administration, nine million more Americans are out of work than was the case in 2000. So now, almost 50 million Americans, nearly one-sixth of the workforce, is uninsured. And you think how crazy that is, in ways. You know, we’re the world’s wealthiest nation, yet one-in-six workers are out of work.

Wall Street is exerting much more pressure on corporations to maximize their share prices, as you know, which means maximize profits, which often translates into lowering costs and especially lowering payroll costs. So a lot of managers will say, you know, the area where they have most flexibility to reduce cost and increase profits is on payroll. So that’s why we’re seeing all these waves of downsizing and Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt.

For more than two decades, the couple had lived in their three-level house, where the elms outside blazed with yellow shades of fall and their four golden retrievers slept in the yard. The town had always been home, with a lazy river and rolling hills dotted by gnarled juniper trees.

Yet just before lunch on Oct. 23, the Donacas closed all their home's doors except the one to the garage and left their 1981 Cadillac Eldorado running. Toxic fumes filled the home. When sheriff's deputies arrived at about 1 p.m., they found the body of Raymond, 71, on the second floor along with three dead dogs. The body of Deanna, 69, was in an upstairs bedroom, close to another dead retriever.

"It is believed that the Donacas committed suicide after attempts to save their home following a foreclosure notice left them believing they had few options," the Crook County Sheriff's Office said in a report.

Their suicides were a tragic extreme, but the Donacas' case symbolizes how the housing crisis is wrenching the emotional lives of legions of homeowners. The escalating pace of foreclosures and rising fears among some homeowners about keeping up with their mortgages are creating a range of emotional problems, mental-health specialists say. Those include anxiety disorders, depression and addictive behaviors such as alcoholism and gambling. And, in a few cases, suicide.

Crisis hotlines are reporting a surge in calls from frantic homeowners. The American Psychological Association (APA) and other mental-health groups are publishing tips on how to handle the emotional stress triggered by the real estate meltdown. Psychologists say they're seeing more drinking, domestic violence and marital problems linked to mortgage concerns ? as well as children trying to cope with extreme anxiety when their families are forced to move.

"They're depressed, anxious. It's affected marriages, relationships," says Richard Chaifetz, CEO of ComPsych, a Chicago-based employee-assistance firm that is counseling homeowners over mortgage fears. "People tend to catastrophize, and that leads to depression. Suicide rates go up. We see an increase in drinking, outbursts at work, violence toward kids. Before, their houses were like ATMs," as they rose in value. "Now, they feel trapped.

Foreclosure filings surged 65% in April compared with the same month last year, according to a report Wednesday by RealtyTrac. One in every 519 households received a foreclosure filing last month, and the number of homes with foreclosure activity in April was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing the report in January 2005.

Don Donaca, Raymond's brother, says it's hard to understand the suicide, but he thinks the pending foreclosure led to their deaths.

"He got so deep in debt he couldn't figure out what else to do," says Don, 74, a retired sawmill worker in Prineville. "I guess a guy would have to walk a few miles in his shoes to understand."

Financial concerns at the top.

Many other homeowners are at risk of less-severe, but still significant, psychological distress: One in seven homeowners worry that they won't be able to make their mortgage payments on time over the next six months, according to an April Associated Press-AOL Money & Finance poll, and more than one-quarter fear their home will decline in value during the next two years.

ComPsych says financial concerns are now the top issue the firm's counselors are hearing in calls from clients. Calls about financial worries have surged 20% over last year; those related to mortgage problems have doubled.

"It's escalated to the No. 1 issue because of the housing crisis," Chaifetz says.

Half of Americans identify housing costs, such as rent or mortgage payments, as significant sources of stress, particularly on the East and West coasts, a 2007 survey by the APA says. Sixty-one percent in the West, and 55% in the East (compared with 47% in the Midwest and 43% in the South) reported housing costs as a very or somewhat significant source of stress.

"The problem affects the whole spectrum, not just people losing their homes," says LeslieBeth Wish, a psychologist and social worker in Sarasota, Fla. "The stress exacerbates what is already there. It brings to the surface problems that were often already there, like marital problems. There is so much blaming people for the situations they're in, and that adds to it."

One of Wish's patients was semiretired when she bought a home in 2005 in southwest Florida as an investment that she hoped to "flip," turning a profit. The woman now owes more than the house is worth and can't sell it.

Wish says her client has developed anxiety, dwelling on her financial situation from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to sleep. Other clients, Wish says, are reporting physical symptoms such as headaches and stomach pains stemming from anxiety over their mortgage situation.

ComPsych's counselors are hearing similar stories of the mental-health toll caused by the housing slump. At the request of USA TODAY, ComPsych's spokeswoman Jennifer Hudson queried counselors to come up with examples of the types of employees they're helping. One couple were going through a divorce, and the wife told ComPsych counselors that financial stress was the final trigger. They had maxed out their credit cards and were living off credit in hopes that they could keep their house. Another woman called because she suspected her husband was gambling again, apparently hoping to win big so they could repair their financial mess. She was afraid they were going to have to move in with her parents, ComPsych says.

For Gary Sweredoski of Myrtle Beach, S.C., the threat of losing his home to foreclosure has taken both a physical and an emotional toll. In 2007, Sweredoski, who had no health insurance, underwent triple bypass surgery and wound up with more than $300,000 in medical bills. Then Sweredoski, 60, a real estate broker, saw his business suffer as the housing market crashed.

Today, he and his wife, Irene, struggle to make the mortgage payment on the dream home they built in Myrtle Beach and are trying to stave off foreclosure. Like many other homeowners struggling with the financial consequences of the housing slump, Gary says the emotional pain can be severe.

Standing on his deck overlooking a lake where ducks swim and bobbing pontoon boats drift by, he says such circumstances "shatter your pride and become very humiliating, even though the circumstances are not of our making.

"The situation keeps you up at night, preventing you from getting the rest you need. A lot of the depression that I feel, I do in private," he says.

"It angers you. It frustrates you. It has a large bearing on your emotional state. When the thought of losing a home looms, you lose more than a building. You lose what you worked for so many years, all of the equity that you have accumulated over the years. It's humbling. It affects us deeply."

Rising depression, suicide rates

Historically, research shows, rates of depression and suicide tend to climb during times of economic tumult.

Privacy Invasion? or are you for enforcement and Innovation?

Portland police are testing a high-tech camera system that rivals anything in a science fiction movie.

It can reach back in time and track your movements across the city — and even produce photos of your previous locations.

But — while some are raising Big Brother civil liberties questions about the concept — the police promise they will only use it to solve crimes, like finding stolen cars or locating wanted criminals.

The system features a series of cameras that mount on patrol cars that automatically read and photograph the license plates of all passing vehicles — including those parked along the sides of the streets. Plates of stolen and suspect-linked vehicles trigger an alarm, allowing the officers to immediately locate them.

The camera also is hooked into a computer that records the exact time and location where each plate was photographed, allowing the police to later map its previous locations around town.

“It’s not magic, but it’s pretty cool,” said Portland Police Southeast Precinct officer Terry Colbert, who has been sharing the Dodge Charger patrol car used in the test.

The test car only has been equipped with the system for a few weeks. But Colbert already has recovered seven stolen cars it identified.

Colbert believes the “data-mining” ability of the system has the potential to be even more important to the police, however.

“If a detective identifies a suspect and links him to a car, we can then go back and find out where the car has been,” Colbert said. “Or we can find out what cars were near a location where a crime was committed and where they went after that.”

System trips a trigger

Although the police still are testing the system, Jan Carson, the associate director of the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, has some concerns about it.

She questions the legality of the police gathering and storing information about the travel patterns of people who are not suspected of committing any crimes — and wonders whether the information could be subpoenaed in civil cases.

“If the collection of the data was specifically tailored to the investigation of a crime, I don’t think we would have any problem with that,” Carson said. “But simply collecting information on where and when people are located, I think that’s a real invasion of privacy.”

Colbert said the police bureau is well aware that many Portlanders might consider the system some kind of computerized Big Brother. He counters that all of the pictures are being taken on public streets, where the expectation of privacy is far less than at home or work. And, Colbert notes, the cameras are angled down so that they only photograph the plates, not the occupants of the vehicles.

Other cities tout benefits

Although Colbert’s car is the only one in Oregon equipped with the system at this time, the technology is not new. Known as automatic license plate recognition, it is manufactured and sold by several companies. The system being tested by the police is manufactured by PIPS Technology, a division of the Federal Signal Corp., which is based in Tennessee.

Although numerous European law enforcement agencies have used the camera systems since the mid-1980s, Amercian police departments only began buying them approximately five years ago.

“Demand in this country is now doubling every year,” said company spokesman Brian Shockley.

Today, he said, about 300 domestic police departments have equipped patrol cars with the company’s system. The Long Beach (Calif.) Police Department claims that since 2005, its nine mobile camera systems have assisted in nearly 200 arrests and the recovery of more than 1,000 stolen vehicles. The Cincinnati Police Department credits the cameras with finding more than 8,000 “vehicles of interest” and assisting with about 300 arrests so far this year, including that of a homicide suspect and a suspected bank robber.

The system even can generate a profit for police by spotting vehicles with overdue parking tickets. Over the past year, Long Beach police identified and towed more than 700 vehicles with nearly $350,000 in outstanding citations.

According to Colbert, the Portland police still are fine-tuning and evaluating the camera and computer system, which can photograph and store hundreds of plate numbers during a single patrol shift.

One idea being discussed is equipping one car in each of the bureau’s five precincts with the system, potentially allowing thousands of license plates to be checked and recorded throughout the city every day.

Averaging about $25,000 per system, the equipment isn’t cheap. But even $125,000 is just a small fraction of the value of all cars stolen in Portland every year.

“There were 5,068 cars stolen in town last year at a value of $23.8 million,” Colbert said. “If we can quickly recover even a fraction of them, that will save car owners and insurance companies a lot of money.”

GPS data also linked

All such license plate camera systems work the same way. They use infrared rays to illuminate the reflectorized fronts of license plates, allowing the contrasting numbers and letters to be identified and photographed. The technology even works at night and in the rain.

Despite its sophistication, the camera is hardly noticeable on the test car. It is essentially a black cylinder, roughly six inches in diameter and four inches in length. Three cameras are mounted on the roof — two facing forward and one looking sideways on the passenger side. This setup allows them to scan the license plates of all vehicles in front of the left and right sides of the car every few seconds, along with cars in parking lots next to it.

A soft ping sounds when each picture is taken. A list of nearly 15,000 stolen plates maintained by the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles has been loaded into the computer. An alarm sounds if one of them is identified.

The cameras also are connected to a PIPS-furnished computer in the trunk of the car. It is loaded with the company’s software that records the time and Global Positioning System location of each photo.

Although Colbert believes this tracking function, potentially, is the system’s biggest benefit, it is what worries Carson the most.

“Who knows how this information will be used in the future?” Carson said. “What policies are going to be in place to protect people from being abused? Once your privacy’s been invaded, there’s little you can do about it.

The Forgotten Homeowners still on the Limbo.

Blame it on the" new economy". You know things are bad when the government devises a bailout bill that ignores the plight of homeowners facing foreclosure, and then the country's biggest mortgage lender announces a massive mortgage modification program. Countrywide Financial, which was recently acquired by Bank of America and is regarded by many to be the corporate poster child for predatory lending, announced a settlement that would provide loan relief for 400,000 borrowers, virtually equaling what the federal government's own modification program is supposed to accomplish.
In what should be regarded as a model for how mortgage lenders should be compelled to fixed the mortgage crisis, Countrywide,

a]long with the direct relief,...will waive late fees of $79 million and prepayment penalties of $56 million and suspend foreclosures on delinquent borrowers with the riskiest loans.
A foreclosure relief fund will be created with $150 million from Countrywide to help borrowers who are four months or more behind on their payments or whose homes have already been foreclosed on. The company will also provide $70 million to help troubled borrowers relocate to rental housing. In all, Countrywide is setting aside $8.7 billion to help borrowers.
...Under the terms of the settlement, Countrywide will reduce principal balances in some cases and cut interest rates in others. Rates could decline to 2.5 percent, depending upon a borrower’s ability to pay, and remain at that level for five years. Then the rate will adjust to prevailing interest rates charged by Fannie Mae on its fixed-rate mortgages.

What's significant about this program is that it reveals the culpability of lenders in the foreclosure crisis, as well as the responsibility they should assume in helping homeowners avoid foreclosure. Although Countrywide does not admit to any wrongdoing - standard practice in these types of agreements - investigations into Countrywide's practices revealed massive acts of underwriting and sales abuse, thus demonstrating how many lenders either manipulated or did not fully disclose the terms of their mortgages.

The California foreclosure bill which targeted the ever-increasing problem of vacant foreclosed homes faced a narrow defeat last Wednesday. According to Don Perata, the sponsor of this bill, its objective was to make sure that people stayed in their own homes. However, the Republicans in the Senate argued that the bill would be an unfair burden on banks as well as on mortgage companies.
A Republican Dave Cox, said that, the lenders would be scared away from California by the bill as they could face a fine of $1,000 daily if they failed to maintain vacant properties, and also give a notice of four months before there is a 10 percent or more increase in mortgage payments. The foreclosure rate in California is among the top five and the state, in fact, has the highest volume of foreclosure. Perata goes on to say that, often three or four houses going waste in a neighborhood is a common sight. This problem has been the topic of hot debate in economic circles for many months now, and California is one of the top states suffering from foreclosures in the country.
According to George Runner, who is a Republican hailing from Lancaster, South California, the law should try to pin down home owners who claimed larger loans by lying about their income, as well as on unethical lenders who trap people into taking loans they cannot possibly afford. Perata had submitted the measure in the form of urgency legislation and to be passed, it required a two thirds majority in its favor. However, it failed as there were 14 votes opposing it, whereas only 26 votes were in favor of the measure. Perata admitted that the high foreclosure rate in California was also partly due to fraud, speculation as well as non-viable financial planning.
In California alone 300,000 loans wait to be reset. Last week, the State Assembly introduced parallel legislation which declared that people wanting to buy houses should be able to afford insurance, mortgage and property taxes. The rules governing mortgage brokers and agents dealing in real estate in California were made stricter in tune with the lending guidelines of the federal government. Foreclosed houses have been burgled and stripped of electrical appliances, copper wiring and pipes, all of which can be sold as scrap. It is truly a sad sight to see empty neighborhoods with foreclosed homes

Could you Imagine your Grandchildrens paid their share for $ 700 billions?

My Son ask me why 700 billions? there is a lot of money. he said. I said yes,There is a lot money. Could you Imagine that Money on your shoulders? He said no way is too heavy.
Well, We as Taxpayers, our Kids, Grandchildrens are going to paid for this mess. So we must take action against those predators who make profit against the will of the taxpayers, consumers (Legal and Undocumented), Citizens and Non Citizens.
The goverment can help and bail out corrupted corporations but not hard workers citizens and non Citizens who's loosing their houses, their Family dreams, their hopes and the hard work earning value.
As a Goverment are we follow the Constitution: We the People or We the Corporate America? Who's to be blame and accountable for this mess?