Medicare

Dr. Sri J. Wijegunaratne of Anaheim Guilty of Role in $1.5 Medicare Billing Fraud Scheme

An Anaheim physician was recently convicted in federal court for his role in a $1.5 million Medicare fraud scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.Dr. Sri J. Wijegunaratne, 58, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, another count of conspiracy to commit hea ... More >>

Orange County Loses Two Hospitals in Two Weeks Due to Owner's Former Criminal Ways

A week after the closure of Anaheim General Hospital was announced, owner Pacific Health Corp. has revealed it's pulling the plug on Newport Specialty Hospital in Tustin as well. But don't blame these closures, or the shuttering of Pacific Health's Bellflower Medical Center and LA Metropolitan Medic ... More >>

Orange County Chiropractor Gets Lengthy Prison Trip For Fraud Scheme

Christian Eunsung Chung, a chiropractor in Orange and Los Angeles counties, was the co-mastermind of a massage parlor scheme that stole more than $1.7 million from the U.S. Treasury through false Medicare claims and today he can give back rubs for free to his cellmate.Federal prosecutors inside the ... More >>

Dr. Kenneth Thaler Gets Year in Prison and $11 mil Fine for Tustin Hospital's Skid Row Scheme

Dr. Kenneth Thaler, a 61-year-old physician who admitted homeless patients to the Tustin Hospital and Medical Center after they had been driven from "Skid Row" in downtown Los Angeles as part of a Medicare fraud scheme, has been sentenced to one year in federal prison. Chief U.S. District Court J ... More >>

Tim Carpenter, OC-Tied Director of Progressive Democrats of America, Calls On Federal Spending Boost

Cal State Fullerton graduate Tim Carpenter--a longtime, popular liberal activist in Orange County before moving to Massachusetts--is calling on Democrats to resist Republican attempts to shortchange middle class and low income Americans in advance of the federal government's so-called looming "fisca ... More >>

A Clockwork Orange County is a New Documentary You May Have Already Seen

As OC Weekly print readers nearing Medicare age know, your humble servant contributed a weekly news digest column called A Clockwork Orange, which some allege was a precursor to Navel Gazing. Remnants still exist somewhere on the webby-nets and in my garage.Well, I am happy to report that some Holly ... More >>

Darcy Fast: Man of God, "Missing Cub" and Lost Boy of Baseball

​Driving through Arizona to catch some spring training games, Darcy Fast says via his cell phone of baseball's annuity plan for the lost boys of summer like him, "I don't think it's fair." A Chicago Cubs pitcher whose darts lived up to his last name in 1967-68, Fast says baseball and the players ... More >>

Glen Justice, OC Cancer Doctor Who Devised $1 Million Insurance Fraud Scam, 'Couldn't Say No' To Patients

​A doctor charged with submitting bills for up to $1 million worth of cancer medications--medications that were never provided to patients--will be suspended for a year after he gets out of jail, then placed on 10 years of probation, the California Medical Board has announced.  Glen Justice r ... More >>

Rep. John Campbell's Newport Beach Office Site of "Occupy Congress" Lunch Vigil Today

​The Progressive Democrats of America, who consider themselves comrades with the Occupy Wall Street movement, is now linking their "Brown Bag Vigils" of local congressional offices with the phenomenon.In fact, they have one scheduled at noon today in front of the Newport Beach district office of R ... More >>

Byung Ho Pak, 71-year-old Garden Grove Doctor, Arrested For Medicare Fraud During Nationwide Crackdown

​The feds arrested a 71-year-old doctor, who practiced in Garden Grove, as part of a nationwide Medicare fraud sting this week. Byung Ho Pak and Mary Lim, manager of Pak's Seoul East West Medical Center, allegedly billed Medicare for about $2 million worth of pyhsical therapy services that w ... More >>

Hospital Workers Get Sent To Disney School to Learn Customer Service Skills

Health in WalesWill these be our new doctors? ​Here's further proof that we live in a Disney world. No, not Disney World, the Orlando theme park, but a world run by the Disney megacorporation.  Kaiser Health News reports that a growing number of hospitals are turning to the Mouse for hel ... More >>

Drop By Rep. Loretta Sanchez's Office At Noon To Tell Her How You Feel About The Debt-Ceiling Debate

​As the debt-ceiling debate trudges on in Washington, a liberal political action committee is taking to every nook and cranny of the country--including Garden Grove. In emails sent to their members, Moveon.org urges "every patriotic American" to show up outside Democratic congressional ... More >>

Glen Justice, Local Oncologist, Sentenced to 18 Months For Health Care Fraud

​An Orange County oncologist, whose fraudulent health care schemes caused losses of up to $1 million, was sentenced to a year-and-a-half in federal prison yesterday.In a precious paradigm of irony, the 66-year-old doctor who pleaded guilty to five counts of health care fraud is named Glen Justice. ... More >>

Nurses Rally Against Government Healthcare and Social Security Cuts

​Just to be clear, the more than 100 registered nurses huddled around Irvine's Civic Center Plaza at high noon today are not there to implant a conscious into Larry Agran. The RNs are joining community activists to rally against any cuts to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.

State Report Blasts UC Irvine Dialysis Center; University Claims Recommendations in Place

​After a November inspection of UC Irvine's dialysis center, state regulators filed a 70-page report detailing poor oversight, unsanitary conditions and mistakes that put patient care and Medicare funding of the facility at risk.News of the report, posted by the Los Angeles Times today, prompted U ... More >>

In Defense of New Mexico

[¡Ask a Mexican!] And can gabachos shorten Spanish words?

Eleanor Santiago, Irvine Doctor Charged in LA with Using Homeless to Bilk Medicare for Millions, Was Already Under Investigation for Giving Out Free Electric Wheelchairs

​Back in late October, headlines were made when Los Angeles authorities arrested a group of doctors for using homeless and mentally ill patients to fraudulently bilk Medicare and Medi-Cal for millions. Little noted locally, though, was that one of the doctors, Eleanor Melo Santiago Arthur, was an ... More >>

Whose Dole Is It, Anyway?

Unauthorized immigrants make up just more than 3 percent of the U.S. population. But they're accused of sucking up public benefits and dodging taxes

Mexican Macroeconomics

Do undocumented migrants steal jobs from American workers?

Anaheim Hills Cosmetic Surgery Center Comes Under an Unfriendly Light

​It's enough to put a permanent frown in your forehead.After a plastic surgeon through the courts successfully challenged the state's authority to regulate surgery centers, California in 2007 stopped licensing such facilities that are at least partly owned by a licensed doctor. According to the ... More >>

Progressive Counterparts to Teabaggers Brown Bag It at Local Congressional Offices Today

​House members are being criticized for leaving Washington, D.C., without a federal budget vote to campaign in their districts before the November election. Some Orange County Congress people, like their brethren around the country, can escape the scorn by sharing a brown bag lunch at their distri ... More >>

Are You With Me, Dr. Fu? Not So Much

​Xinming Fu, a 48-year-old Irvine physician, has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison for his role in a $15 million health care fraud scheme that plied the elderly and mentally ill with candy, doughnuts and cigarettes to get them to undergo unnecessary respiratory treatments that were b ... More >>

Phu Tan "Peter" Luong, Accused of Using Wheelchair Scam Funds to Start Business Hawking Dangerous Boner Pills

​Phu Tan Luong, a 55-year-old health-care fraudster who moved from Huntington Beach to a federal prison cell in Plano, Texas, where he is serving 10 years for a scam involving wheelchairs and hospital beds, has now been charged with distributing ... More >>

Duane Roberts, Anaheim Activist, Announces U.S. Sentate Run

Roberts​If a former community organizer can become president of the United States, why can't a community organizer become a U.S. senator?Longtime Anaheim activist Duane Roberts announced that he will file papers with the Orange County Registrar of Voters today to put his name on the June primary b ... More >>

The "Irvine 11" Fights the Power

​As they fill out their AARP membership cards, '60s burnouts can rejoice that a group of campus agitators has at last come along to rival the infamous Chicago Seven.Mamas and papas, introducing the "Irvine 11"! Something's happening here, and what it is ain't exactly kosher. The Irvine 11 are the ... More >>

Santa Ana-Based Street Gang Implicated in $25 Million Medicare Fraud Cases

​A Long Beach man and a Santa Ana street gang have been implicated in an alleged Medicare fraud schemes that resulted in approximately $25 million in fraudulent bills to the Medicare program, various federal authorities announced this morning. In all, 18 defendants, most of whom reside ... More >>

Rally Tonight Opposes Obama and Town-Hall Criers in Health-Care Debate

All for one and one for OC Healthcare for All.​OC Healthcare for All and other groups peeved about the current health-care debate march to the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in downtown Santa Ana tonight and rally in support of the following message:Both sides--the ones personified by President Ba ... More >>

State Taxman Pops Buena Park Doctor and Wife for Alleged Fraud

 The state Franchise Tax Board (FTB) reports today that physician John S. Han, 61, and his wife Sonya Han, 55, were arrested on felony counts of Medicare fraud and filing fraudulent state income tax returns after a search of their Buena Park home. According to FTB special agents, Mr. Han ... More >>

Will The Feds Come After Tustin Hospitals Next?

All the key swindlers in the homeless patient dumping scheme that sucked hundreds of thousands of dollars from Medicare and Medi-Cal programs in fradulent claims last year have been indicted -- except, that is, for the bad boys in Tustin who were also allegedly involved in the scheme. Last August a ... More >>

There's Something About Pacific Health

Remember the wandering homeless patient we wrote about a few months back who had been shipped from an Orange County hospital to L.A.'s Skid Row and dumped there? Well such incidents have been the subject of a federal investigation initiated in 2006 after the LAPD began looking into reports of hospi ... More >>

To Do Tonight 6/4

Club Abstract, 9 p.m. house, trance and electro. Hogue Barmichael's 3950 Campus Dr. Newport Beach CA 92660 949-261-6270 DJ Josh, 9 p.m. Chill Kitsch Bar 891 Baker St., Ste. A10 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 714-546-8580 The Ethnic and Artistic Sources that Inspired the Spanish Colonial Architecture of So ... More >>

[¡Ask a Mexican!®] Special Dia de los Impuestos Edition

Letters

Add in a completely substandard produce section and meat that I could find cheaper elsewhere, and you have the perfect storm of crap

Speaking of congressional races ...

Check out this little ray of sunshine from Bloomberg (the news service, not the mayor): Candidates Ignore $1.35 Trillion Minimum Tax `Bomb' By Ryan J. Donmoyer Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Congressional candidates this fall are furiously debating Iraq, Medicare and extending tax cuts. Most are staying qu ... More >>

Letters

'He is smart enough to realize if he didnt get out then, he may have awoken a fortysomething with crazy-colored hair and a tattoo of dragons circle jerking'

A Little Bit Pregnant

Whoever said you can't be a little bit pregnant never reckoned with the can-do spirit of the Bush administration. As the Washington Post reports: New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant ... More >>

MoveOn vs. Rohrabacher

This just in, from MoveOn.org: Rep. Rohrabacher Accepts $40,785.00 From Drug Companies; Puts Drug Company Profits Ahead of Seniors Huntington Beach MoveOn Members Urge Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to Cancel May 15th Medicare Sign-Up Deadline Constituents will hold "Caught Red-Handed Check Deliveries" out ... More >>

Immigration? We've Got Bigger Problems

Why our noncitizens are our best citizens

Mr. Rooney Goes to UCI

Bring me the head of the head head doctor!

Mea Culpa, We Fuck-Uppa

There were two HUUUUGE mistakes in the virtual droolings below. First, in KEN CALVERT'S MOD SQUAD, we reported that OC Blog has always been behind state Senator John Campbell (R-Richy Richland) from the beginning of his quest for the 48th Congressional District seat. A close follower of Clockwork an ... More >>

Credit Where Credit is Due

George W. Bushs most ingrinable moments on DVD

Burning Bush: The Issue

A year in Dubya-dumping by his conservative critics . . . and Howard Stern

59 Reasons Why Bush Sucks

Why youd have to be a freaking idiot to vote for this guy

Burning Bush

The presidents conservative critics

The presidents conservative critics

To Your Corporate Health

Letters

War!!!

But first a quick workout

Orange Countys Real Bad Boy

George Argyros connected to yet another alleged business scam

Dumbbell

Eric Bechler committed a perfect murderand then bragged about it