Ben Cline is against Medicare fraud, except when it’s done by Republicans

Ben Cline, our Sixth District congressman, wants you to know that he’s against Medicare fraud, because that’s a politically sexy thing to be – against Medicare fraud.

Can’t argue there.

I mean, who wants to be out here being for Medicare fraud, right?

Like, for example, who could possibly be on the side of a guy who was the CEO of company that systematically defrauded the government of billions in the name of fleecing our nearly insolvent Medicare system.

Right, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.?

Scott never faced criminal charges in his case.

He claimed political persecution – he’s a Republican; the civil cases against his company, HCA, were brought by both the Clinton and Bush DOJs – and also tried to play the ignorance of what was going on at the company that he ran game, saying he would have done something to stop the fraud, “if somebody told me something was wrong.”

It’s your job as CEO to know if something is wrong; that’s why you get paid the big bucks.

Or bigger bucks, if your company is fleecing the government.

This kind of fraud, it seems bad; wonder what Ben Cline thinks?

And what about the people who forged patient files for mentally ill people to make them appear to qualify for Medicare sleep studies, and paid kickbacks to assisted living facilities for sending ineligible patients to his mental health facility?

Donald Trump commuted the sentences of the perps in this one, Judith Negron and Lawrence Duran, and absolved them of the millions in fines that they’d been ordered to pay.

I dunno, I would like to think that Ben Cline, being a foe of Medicare fraud, might want to have something to say on the record on this one.

Were they also victims of political persecution, like Rick Scott?

Or, since we’re talking about political persecution, like Democrats in Minnesota and California?

Republicans, and Cline is running plays from the playbook here, are efforting to make Medicare fraud something that only happens in Democrat-run states like Minnesota and California

That’s why it was that we saw Cline take to his socials this week to state, unequivocally, that “Medicare fraud intentionally targets an at-risk population and takes advantage of them,” and that “there’s no such thing as victimless fraud, and Americans need to know how to protect themselves from fraudsters.”

I mean, I’m with him on that – the part about Americans needing to know to protect themselves from fraudsters.

I don’t like it that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s HHS just up and reinstated 850 insurance agents and brokers who were suspended by the Biden administration for suspected Medicare fraud.

That one seems shady to me.

What about you, Ben?

Or is it only fraud that you can turn into a political talking point that bothers you?