Courtesy of Flickr user Adam JonesReuters: US Sues Hospice Company for Wrongly Billing Medicare
Summary: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued AsperaCare, a hospice care provider with facilities in 19 different states, alleging that the company made millions of dollars through false Medicare claims. The DOJ suit joins that of a whistleblower suit filed in 2009 by former employees.
Related Article: WTVA (MS)
Globe and Mail (Canada): Keystone Inspector Alleges Shoddy Work on Original Pipeline
Summary: A former inspector for the company who did work on the original Keystone pipeline is accusing the company of shoddy work, substandard materials and a disregard for the environment. He filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Department of Labor in 2010.
Key Quote: “Let's be clear — I am an engineer; I am not telling you we shouldn't build pipelines,” he wrote in [Nebraska’s Lincoln Journal Star]. “We just should not build this one.”
Antiwar.com: Dark Days for Government Whistleblower
Summary: In this interview, GAP client and NSA whistleblower Tom Drake and GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack discuss Drake’s whistleblowing and the eventual decline of the Justice Department’s case against him.
Summary: The total number of apprehensions made by the Border Patrol in the sector that includes Alaska, Oregon, and part of Washington, is down 12 percent from last year and down 27 percent from 2006, when the Port Angeles station in Washington had only four agents compared to its current 36.
Border Patrol whistleblower and GAP client Christian Sanchez appeared before an advisory committee on transparency in DC last summer, alleging that Port Angeles was overstaffed with “no purpose, no mission.”
San Francisco Chronicle: Maersk Line to Pay US $31.9 Million in Settlement
Summary: The US subsidiary of the major shipping company Maersk Line will pay $31.9 million for overcharging the federal government on shipments to the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The whistleblower suit was filed in 2007, although first disclosed this week.
Summary: The FDA quietly withdrew a petition that urged the regulation of antibiotic use in animal agriculture after having been on the back-burner for more than 30 years. The move took place despite increasing evidence that links antibiotic use in livestock feed to dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans.
Hannah Johnson is Communicatoins Associate for the Government Accountability Project, th nation's leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.
