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Frist ethics skeletons Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/850513.asp?0cv=KB20http://www.msnbc.com/news/850513.asp?0cv=KB20
The Skeletons in Frist’s Closet
An ethics expert says his ties to America’s biggest hospital company could be a problem
By Suzanne Smalley
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Dec. 21 — Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist will almost certainly be elected majority leader when the senate votes on a successor to Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott next month. The choice is a happy one for President George W. Bush, who views Frist as an effective ally; Frist has even been discussed as a possible replacement for Vice President Dick Cheney on the ticket in 2004.
THERE’S NO QUESTION about it: The heart surgeon’s quick rise to power has turned plenty of heads inside the Beltway. But Frist may have a few skeletons in the closet of his own. HCA, the largest hospital chain in the country, is run by Frist’s brother and was founded by his father. Frist himself owns millions in Columbia/HCA stock, kept in a blind trust. And even though Columbia/HCA had an obvious stake in the outcome of both the Congressional Medicare commission’s work and the patients’ bill of rights legislation, Frist didn’t withdraw from either debate. In fact, the Tennessee senator took a leadership role in both instances. Meanwhile, Columbia/HCA had been the focus of the government’s longest-running health care fraud inquiry. On Wednesday, HCA announced an $880 million settlement with the Justice Department. Charles Lewis, the executive director of the non-profit and non-partisan Center for Public Integrity and the author of the “Buying of the President” and other books about transparency in government spoke with NEWSWEEK about Sen. Frist’s potential conflict of interest.
NEWSWEEK: What do you make of the timing of the Columbia/HCA settlement with the Justice Department? The federal investigation into the Frist firm first publicly surfaced in 1997 and it settles on Wednesday after five years of wrangling over its terms?
Charles Lewis: It is interesting. I try to avoid connecting dots. I don’t know what it means and judges don’t talk.
Should Sen. Frist have declined to take a leadership role on the patients’ bill of rights legislation? Should he have taken part in the Medicare commission?
Every Senator handles these things a little differently. It’s a little more personal when it’s your profession. It’s one thing to have a relative or a spouse with investments and recluse yourself. It’s harder when it’s been your life and you’re elected as a lawmaker based on who you are and what you’ve done with your life. That said, when you’re worth millions and millions because of controversial and criminally investigated health-care firm and you have significant familial ties to the firm itself, that’s a pretty direct conflict situation.
What about the fact that the company in question has just settled an $880 million fraud inquiry with the Justice Department?
I think it looks like hell. It’s not some obscure company he owns stock in. His family and Sen. Frist have personally become rich because of this company. It is the source of his wealth. I have not studied trial transcripts and briefs and the thousands of pages of material that have built up over the years in the case, but you’ve got to wonder: If there was substantial fraud committed in that company, what did the Frist family know and when did they know it? This subject will follow him throughout his career. Frist’s political career is soaring and seems to have been so far unaffected by the Columbia/HCA scandal. That’s interesting in and of itself.
Is that because we’re talking about insurance fraud and most people don’t pay attention to such dry stories?
Half the country doesn’t vote, 96 percent don’t contribute [money to the political system], 40 percent don’t know the name of the vice president. We have a complacent, aloof, and frequently, yes, ignorant electorate. There certainly hasn’t been the glare of national interest in Frist that there has been this week. It’s possible that the scrutiny-which has been increasing in the last 72 hours-is a level of scrutiny Frist has never encountered and what is acceptable to Tennessee voters may be unacceptable to the nation.
Frist’s situation is not necessarily atypical. What does his ascendancy and the presence of other compromised Senators past and present say about our system?
We generally tolerate an awful lot of what I call legal corruption; things that don’t violate federal law but that look like hell. My answer is ‘welcome to Washington.’ We have a lot of things going on in Washington that offend average Americans, but that are just fine by Washington standards. It’s normal for someone to promulgate public policy after taking money from those folks who are affected by the legislation. That is not illegal or, by Congressional standards, unethical but to most Americans it stinks. That’s why people despise or distrust politicians and it has something to do with why 100 million or more Americans stay home on election day. Here is Congress hammering out what are the rights of all Americans when it comes to health care and one of the key Senate leaders deeply involved in that process is a multimillionaire from a fraudulent health care company. Call me crazy if I have a problem with that.
Was it wrong for Sen. Frist to tell the American people that he did not know how patients’ bill of rights legislation would affect his family’s company? Since many Americans feel quite strongly about health care and the way it works in this country could this issue explode for Frist?
It was disingenuous. Let’s be honest. To suggest that that legislation would not affect the company is an insult to our intelligence. It’s clear to anyone that a major health-care company is very interested in the language and outcome of patients’ bill of rights legislation. People are deeply bitter about health care in this country. Not just the uninsured, but also those with a problem who are trying to seek redress. When Congress deals with it [health care] and one of the senators dealing with it is a leading shareholder with one of the largest companies in the country and that company is, bottom line, a bad actor, voters are going to have a problem with that. There used to be a time in this country when a senator whose family company was found to have committed fraud would not have the temerity to stand election for anything—even dogcatcher.
Is there a disconnect between what average Americans would consider to be a conflict of interest and what the Senate Ethics Committee considers to be one?
There’s almost an oxymoron here. The Senate Ethics Committee hardly ever investigates anything aggressively. They’re notoriously reticent when it comes to criticizing or investigating colleagues’ transgressions. Human beings don’t like to judge themselves. Usually we would like to look the other way when it comes to ourselves. In that sense, the U.S. Senate is completely representative of American culture. Yet the Senate is a club. More than a third of them are millionaires; less than one percent of Americans are millionaires. It’s not a representative body in many ways. The Senate is an exclusive club and it’s a substantially white and wealthy club.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
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