Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Menendez (D-N.J.) initially contacted federal officials in 2009 about the government’s audit of Salomon Melgen, complaining to the director overseeing Medicare payments that it was unfair to penalize the doctor because the billing rules were ambiguous, the aides said. Last year, in a meeting with the acting administrator of the agency in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, Menendez again questioned whether federal auditors had been fair in their assessment of Melgen’s billing for eye injections to treat macular degeneration, the senator’s aides said. The agency had ordered Melgen to repay the $8.9 million, and at the time of both conversations, Melgen was disputing the agency’s conclusion. His appeal continues to this day.
Menendez’s office provided this account of his contacts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after The Washington Post asked about the role he had played in the long-standing dispute between Melgen and the agency over his billing practices. Menendez, who became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this month, is under scrutiny because of his close relationship with Melgen. The doctor donated more than $700,000 last year to Menendez’s reelection campaign and other Senate Democrats. And when Melgen needed help with a port security contract in the Dominican Republic last year, Menendez urged U.S. officials to press the country to carry out the multimillion-dollar agreement.
Menendez is facing a Senate ethics inquiry about two free trips he took in 2010 on Melgen’s private plane to the doctor’s seaside mansion in the Dominican Republic. Menendez acknowledged this month that he had not properly disclosed the trips. He wrote a personal check for $58,500 to reimburse Melgen. Meanwhile, a federal investigation of what law enforcement officials say are allegations of health-care fraud by Melgen escalated last week when FBI agents and health-care investigators raided medical offices in West Palm Beach where he runs Vitreo-Retinal Consultants. The teams spent nearly 24 hours searching the premises and removing dozens of boxes containing billing and medical records and computer files.
Federal investigators and health-care auditors have had concerns about Melgen’s billing practices at various times over the past decade, two former federal officials said. In part, they have examined the volume of eye injections, surgeries and laser treatments performed at his West Palm Beach clinic. But a Menendez aide said Wednesday that the senator did not know Melgen was under formal investigation for possible fraud until the well-publicized raid last week. “Senator Menendez was never aware of and has not intervened in any Medicare fraud investigation on behalf of Vitreo Retinal Consultants,” his office said in a statement.
MORE
If you care about a fair unbiased press than post this everyplace you can think of.
ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN mum on FBI raid of doctor office tied to Menendez | The Daily Caller
If you care about a fair unbiased press than post this everyplace you can think of.
ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN mum on FBI raid of doctor office tied to Menendez | The Daily Caller
Or maybe they think we have more important things to talk about.
Now, I know the GOP ended up doing a 70 million dollar panty-sniffing investigation on Clinton back in the 1990's... but I think that a lot of people are a little dubious when the GOP brings these kind of things up now.
The boy who cried wolf?
If you care about a fair unbiased press than post this everyplace you can think of.
ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN mum on FBI raid of doctor office tied to Menendez | The Daily Caller
Or maybe they think we have more important things to talk about.
Now, I know the GOP ended up doing a 70 million dollar panty-sniffing investigation on Clinton back in the 1990's... but I think that a lot of people are a little dubious when the GOP brings these kind of things up now.
The boy who cried wolf?
yeah sure, now if Mendez had been a Republican you all would be going all gaga over the pantie sniffing
but I guess since he's a Democrat accused of having sex with underage girls it's not worth the Lamestream media reporting or you Democrats getting all hot and bothered over it
It's that TWO FACED double standards we see all the time from you people
