KC Woman Fights Deportation
Mon Apr 10, 11:18 PM ET

The immigration issue has been hitting especially close to home for one metro-area woman.
Myrna Dick, 31, has faced deportation to Mexico for two years. Dick is a native of Mexico who has lived most of her life in the United States and is married to an American, Brady. The couple has a 17-month-old son, Zachary, who is considered a U.S. citizen.
The federal government has been trying to deport Dick because immigration officials claim she lied about her identity to border authorities in 1998 when she returned from a trip to Mexico.
Dick told KMBC's Donna Pitman that she hopes changes in immigration law will help keep her family together.

"I feel nervous. I feel happy, nervous, worry -- everything together," Dick said.
She said she's been paying attention to all the Hispanic demonstrations across the country.
"I've been staying up until 4 a.m. watching the immigration events. It's starting to get me so fascinated," Dick said.
She said she hopes immigration law will include a false claims waiver that will pardon those accused of making false claims of citizenship.
"I just hope something comes up, something to let undocumented people who've been here five or more years stay, and drop the charges of false claims to citizenship," Dick said.
Meanwhile, Dick hopes and prays her future and family will remain in Ameirca.
"The land of dreams and opportunity for everybody," Dick said.
In February, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Dick can be deported to Mexico. Dick's attorneys have asked the court to rehear the case. If it doesn't, they plan to go to the
U.S. Supreme Court' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> U.S. Supreme Court.

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Daniel Porter, Psycho MoFo

Posted on Sun, Feb. 05, 2006
‘I can’t wait to get to prison’ AUDIO
Father of missing children defiant
By JUDY L. THOMAS
The Kansas City Star

The Independence man whose two children disappeared 20 months ago says he would rather die than reveal to authorities and his ex-wife what he did with them.“Let ’em think that they’re dead,” said Daniel Porter, in a recent telephone call from jail. “That way they don’t have to worry so much about finding them. … I’d rather die than give them the satisfaction.”

On the eve of Porter’s kidnapping trial, The Kansas City Star obtained more than eight hours of recordings of his jailhouse conversations through a Missouri Sunshine Law records request. The calls were made to a friend and to some of Porter’s relatives from early 2005 through mid-January. In the calls from the Jackson County Detention Center, Porter said the more he’s pressured to talk, the deeper he’ll dig in his heels.

“I can play the game, too,” he said. “I’ll be happy in jail.”

In the recordings, Porter talked very little about his children, spending most of the time ridiculing authorities and bad-mouthing his ex-wife, Tina Porter, the children’s mother. He revealed that he enjoyed being a jailhouse celebrity and that he had planned for at least a month to take the children.

And, he said, he expects to be found guilty.

Porter, 42, picked up his children, Sam and Lindsey, from their Independence home on June 5, 2004, for a weekend visit. The children haven’t been seen since. Testimony in Porter’s trial is scheduled to begin this week in Jackson County Circuit Court in Independence. Jury selection is expected to continue Monday.

Jackson County prosecutors have declined to comment on whether they have listened to all of Porter’s phone calls. Because of the ongoing case, they had no comment Friday on the recordings obtained by The Star. Independence police referred questions to the prosecutor.
Porter’s attorney, Tim Burdick, had no comment about any statements his client may have made over the phone.

Porter — who was aware his conversations were being monitored — was careful not to reveal what he did with his children, who were 7 and 8 when they disappeared. In call after call, Porter talked about how he had the “upper hand” in what he saw as a cat-and-mouse game with the law. He talked about investigators failing to find his children and laughed about how much money his case was costing the state.

“They’re (police) looking so stupid. When they first arrested me, they didn’t look for no scars on my hands or arms or face to see if the kids fought back as I struggled to kill them. Or if I buried them, why wouldn’t I have calluses?” he said.

In a conversation in November, Porter said that he started lying to police about the children’s whereabouts as soon as he was arrested. “The first thing they said was, ‘Where’s your kids at? If we find out that you harmed them or killed them, we can give you the death penalty.’ ”
But Porter, who worked at a Kansas City packaging plant before his arrest, said repeatedly that he would not cut any deals with prosecutors. “Mike Sanders, the prosecutor, he kept saying, ‘He holds the key to the jail. He holds the key to the jail,’ ” Porter said. “Well, here’s the deal. I hold the key to the jail two years from now, five years from now.”

In another conversation, Porter said, “Even if they made me a sweet deal saying, ‘OK, bring the kids home and we’ll let you off scot-free, no charges whatsoever, just walk out the door’... don’t believe them.”

Where are the children?

In one call, Porter said that he wanted people to believe the children were dead.
“That way, they can look for dead bodies in the woods by my house and in Trenton and down where I hunted in Princeton,” he said, referring to places where he grew up in Missouri. Then he laughed. “I heard somebody say they think I put them with the Mennonites.”
In another call, Porter learned that one of his buddies had taken Independence police to search an area near a creek where they used to hunt.

“I ain’t trippin’ on that (stuff),” Porter retorted. “They’re gonna put houses in there before too long, and they can find them then, if that’s where they think they are.”

He said that taking the children wasn’t a last-minute scheme. “I planned my big jailhouse deal a month before I got arrested,” he said, “so I knew I was gonna go to jail. I just didn’t tell noooobody.”

In another call, Porter complained about a Star article published last August that raised questions about some of his actions prior to taking the children. The article said that within hours of his arrest, Porter told authorities several times that he had killed his children.
“If I didn’t know myself, I killed them,” he said sarcastically. “No doubt about it.”
In one conversation, he said, “If they think that I killed them, why don’t they charge me for that?”

Indeed, Porter brought up the death penalty in several calls.

“My lawyer mentioned, you know, that they may even try — nobody has proof that the kids are all right — they may even try to get you for murder,” he said in a call last year. “I said, ‘Oh, great. How will that set over if maybe, say, they give me the death penalty and then two weeks after I’m dead, here comes the kids?’ They’re gonna feel pretty good then, ain’t they?”
In another conversation, he said, “Let’s say they give me 30 years to life and I get out after doing 25 years and then all of a sudden, wham! There’s the kids. ‘Oh, hi, kids!’ And so I serve 25 years for murder, let’s say that. And then I turn around and I kill both of them. They couldn’t arrest me again, could they?”

Criticism of ex-wife

Porter indicated that his main defense would be to show that his ex-wife was an unfit mother. He constantly criticized her, saying that she “wanted to wear the jeans” in the family and spent too much money.

“So why would I want my kids with a woman that has no money and don’t know how to spend it?” he said. Later, he said, “I told the guard the other day I should get life in prison or the death penalty just for marrying her.”

The trial, Porter said, was going to be “like an ugly divorce. … She thinks the kids are hers. Well, the kids are mine, too. She didn’t have nothing to do with the kids.”

Tina Porter said Friday that she was a good mother and loved her children.
“I want him to take the stand and prove that I’m the unfit mother he thinks I am. I just want him to think about what he’s saying. He knows that wasn’t how our marriage was. I want to know how he can sleep with himself at night. He’s got to live with it every day,” she said.

Life in jail

Porter apparently likes jail life. He spoke often about his prowess at Monopoly and how he had befriended an inmate who is being held on multiple murder charges. “Man, I’m eating this up,” he said. “Being able to sleep extra, take a nap in the middle of the day if I want, play cards.”
He said fellow inmates and his defense attorney can’t figure out why he’s so cheerful.
“My lawyer sees me happy all the time, and he keeps saying, ‘I think we’re gonna have to plead you insanity,’ ” he said.

Most inmates, Porter noted, are “worried to death” about what’s going to happen to them.
“I’m living better in here than I did part of the time growing up. And it’s free,” he said.
In another call, Porter said that he ruled the roost in what he referred to as “the psycho module.”

“The guards call me Al Pacino and the Godfather in here,” he said, “because of the way I run things. I got some pull, buddy. I can’t wait to get to prison and get started all over, because it’s gonna be like a new school.”

And in another call, Porter noted that the case had been televised on “Inside Edition” and “America’s Most Wanted.” “They call me a movie star around here,” he said. “Everybody recognizes me. But everybody’s on my side. Ain’t one person here thinks that I killed them.”
Porter said, however, that he’d been in a couple of fights and had sought medical treatment after one scuffle. One fight erupted, he said, after an inmate asked about Sam and Lindsey.
“I had a new guy yesterday tell me, ‘Where’s your kids?’ ” Porter said. “And I said, ‘Hey, you don’t be talking about me and my kids.’ And I bust my hand on the Plexiglas.”
Porter said he ran into the inmate later and told him, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll be all right as long as you don’t talk about my kids.” Then, he said, the punches started flying.

Porter at one point said that no one knows how his story will end. “This case ain’t gonna be closed until the kids come home,” he said. “So, it could be tomorrow, it could be 10 years.”
But Porter admitted that, while he had confidence in his public defender, he wasn’t optimistic.
“I heard he only lost one case, and that was 15 years ago,” Porter said. “But he ain’t gonna win mine. I’m not gonna walk scot-free.”

The story until now…

■ On June 5, 2004, Daniel Porter picked up his children, Sam and Lindsey, from the Independence home of his estranged wife, Tina Porter, for a weekend visit. The children, who were 7 and 8 at the time, haven’t been seen since.
■ Porter was charged with two counts of parental kidnapping and two counts of parental kidnapping with intent to terrorize. He has refused to say what he did with the children.
■ In August 2004, federal authorities charged Porter with being a felon in possession of four firearms after weapons were recovered in the Missouri River. Porter pleaded guilty in federal court to those charges and last May was sentenced to 10 years.
■ Jury selection began Friday for Porter’s trial on the kidnapping charges. If convicted, he faces nearly 40 years in prison.
■ Go to
KansasCity.com to hear excerpts of the jailhouse tapes and read more stories on the investigation by Judy L. Thomas.
Methodology
The Star obtained recordings of Dan Porter’s phone calls through a Missouri Sunshine Law open-records request. The calls were made from a pay phone at the Jackson County Detention Center from early 2005 through mid-January. Because the county deemed the recordings public records, it released them to the newspaper.
Tim Burdick, Porter’s attorney, said that he thought The Star misused the Sunshine Law in acquiring the tapes.
“It (the law) is to allow them to look into the government to make sure it is not misleading the people,” Burdick said. “It is to make sure the public’s best interest is being served.”
Burdick acknowledged that Porter has no expectation of privacy while on the phone when it comes to jailhouse security. But he argued Porter does have an expectation of privacy when it comes to media using those discussions to serve its own purpose.
An attorney representing The Star disagreed.
“All we did was make a request for access to records which we believe to be public under Missouri law,” Jon Haden said. “Jackson County granted that request. We see nothing improper about either the request or the county’s response.”
The Star’s Kevin Hoffmann contributed to this report. To reach Judy L. Thomas, call (816) 234-4334 or send e-mail to jthomas@kcstar.com.
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Moly Ivins: Roy Blunt Will be More of the Same - KCSTAR 21 Jan 2006

Blunt as GOP leader means more of the same

Molly Ivins

AUSTIN — It takes a Texas Republican to get that fine, hairline reading on the ethical sensitivity scale we all prize so highly.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that a couple of six-packs of Texas Republican congressmen have signed up to endorse Rep. Roy Blunt, Tom DeLay’s chosen successor, in the House leadership fight. Glad to see they’re taking this ethical stuff seriously.

Why else support a man of whom the director of CongressWatchobserves, “(His) tenure in Congress has been marked by exchanges of favors between himself and special interests, and a deep embrace of lobbyists. He is an architect of today’s sleazy, big-money politics, not the agent of change that Congress so desperately needs right now to regain credibility with the public.” Just the man for our delegation.

Texas Republicans are now being led by Rep. Joe Barton of Ennis, chairman of the critical Energy and Commerce Committee. DeLay sits in on their meetings by speakerphone. Barton is just the man for the job in theseethically sensitive times. He’s spending this weekend aboard a private trainwith lobbyists who pay $2,000 for the privilege. After a seven-hour run from Fort Worth to San Antonio, there will be cocktails, an evening tour of the Alamo, dinner and breakfast on Sunday.

It’s the delicatesse of the invite that I appreciate, and I think the price is right, too — only $2K for hours of uninterrupted access to the chairman whose committee has jurisdiction over about half of what Congress does — including oil policy, pro baseball, Medicare and environmental regulation.

Barton’s campaign manager told The Dallas Morning News:“It’s just a normal fundraiser. You’ve got to have a fundraiser if you’re going to raise money and have a campaign. Everybody does it.”

In this unhappy case it has the advantage of being true: Yup, pretty much everybody does do it. The root of the rot is the way federal(and most state) campaigns are financed. DeLay made his pact with the devil when he signed on to expand the Newt Gingrich/Grover Norquist “K Street Project” to turn the entire lobby into an arm of the Republican Party.

Members of the lobby were literally called in by Republican leaders to act as auxiliary whips, assigned to recalcitrant members from districts with a special economic vulnerability to a particular special interest.

The corruption of Congress has reached such a noxious level,the country is simply falling down a hole. Tax cuts for the rich! Recklessspending on everyone but those who need it most! Not a grown-up in sight. There is no sense of responsibility. The Republicans’ response is to elevate Mr. Blunt, a man who represents zero improvement.

I think we can rely upon the Democrats to seize the momentand punt. Their best play, of course, is to take the reform issue and own it, to go long, for the whole reform package every goo-goo group in America has been agitating for years — starting with public campaign financing for Congress. The package should include changes in House rules, lobby rules — and even though it is done at the state level, proposals for nonpartisan redistricting.

I can almost hear the condescending cynics: “You don’t really think you can get the money out of politics, do you?” I guarantee you can do it for several cycles — and do you know what happens when it starts to creep back in again? You reform again! Perpetual reform, a truly great concept. No human institution is ever going to remain perfect. They have to be watched and adjusted like any other mechanism. Why use that as a defeatist excuse for doing nothing at all?
What matters here is not what the Republicans or the Democrats do — it’s what you do before November. Sit up, join up, stir it up, get online, get in touch, find out who’s raising hell and join them. No use waiting on a bunch of wussy politicians.

© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Rove Lays Out Road Map For Republicans - NYT 21 Jan 2006

Rove Lays Out Road Map for Republicans in Fall Elections

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By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: January 21, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 - Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, gave nervous Republicans here a preview on Friday of the party's strategy to maintain its dominance in the fall elections, offering a searing attack on Democrats for their positions on terrorism, the administration's eavesdropping program and President Bush's effort to shape the federal judiciary.
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Doug Mills/The New York Times
Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, before his speech Friday. Security emerged as a dominant issue for this year's elections.

Mr. Rove called for civility in politics in his speech to the Republican National Committee, and then for 26 minutes offered a lacerating attack on Democrats that other Republicans said was a road map for how the party would deal with a tough electoral environment as it battled to retain control of both houses of Congress.

In a speech that drew several bursts of strong applause, Mr. Rove criticized Democrats for their opposition to tax cuts and for what he called "mean-spirited" attacks on Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominee. And he left little doubt that in 2006 - as in both nationwide elections since the Sept. 11 attacks - he was intent on making national security the pre-eminent issue.

Mr. Rove's speeches early in election years have proved to be accurate predictors of what Republican candidates will say in the fall, and thus every seat in the ballroom at a downtown Washington hotel was filled Friday.

Mr. Rove criticized Democrats for what he described as their "cut and run" policy on Iraq, for blocking a renewal of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act and for challenging the legality of the administration's use of wiretaps without warrants.

But he made no mention of Republican opposition to aspects of both the antiterrorism law and the surveillance program, which has posed a political problem for the White House.
"The United States faces a ruthless enemy," Mr. Rove said, "and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

"Let me be as clear as I can be. President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he said, referring to the wiretapping program. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."
The speech was a relatively rare public address by one of the best-known public officials in the White House and came at a time when Mr. Rove is under investigation in a case involving the leak to reporters of the name of a C.I.A. operative.

In his speech, Mr. Rove made no mention of his own legal situation. And even as he sought to rally his troops, he did not mention an issue that accounts for much of the Republican concern about the fall election: the influence-peddling investigation of Congress that has focused on some senior Republican leaders, including Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, who has stepped down as majority leader.

The issue of ethics was left to Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Mr. Mehlman condemned Republicans implicated in any scandals, though he sought - as part of a Republican strategy this week - to place some blame on Democrats for the investigations swirling around Congress.

"Public service is a sacred trust, and we cannot allow it to be sullied by anyone, Republican or Democrat," he said. "As Republican chairman, I am proud of my party and loyal to our members. But if Republicans are guilty of illegal or inappropriate behavior, they should pay the price and suffer the consequences."

Howard Dean, the national Democratic leader, responded to Mr. Rove's attacks by noting the investigation into his activities and challenging Mr. Bush's decision to keep him in the White House, even as the investigation proceeds.

"Rove's political standing gets him an invitation to address Republicans in Washington, D.C., today," Mr. Dean said, "but it doesn't give him the credibility to question Democrats' commitment to national security. The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain, and that is both unpatriotic and wrong."

The White House's increasingly forceful defense of the eavesdropping program signals its belief that the disclosures are not politically damaging, notwithstanding criticism. Some polls so far suggest that Americans are supportive of the eavesdropping campaign.

For all his bullishness, Mr. Rove got a reminder Friday that his party is not as united as it once was.

Some Republicans at the meeting tried to push through a resolution condemning illegal immigration that explicitly broke with Mr. Bush's support for allowing illegal immigrants to participate in guest-worker programs. This issue has proved vexing for the party as it tries to expand its appeal to Hispanics while not alienating voters angered by the flow of illegal immigrants.

Randall L. Pullen of Arizona, the sponsor of the resolution, pulled it back after an officially sanctioned resolution reflecting Mr. Bush's immigration policy passed with a single dissent.

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Blunt wants answers after man dies waiting for Medicaid ride

Source: KCS
Credit: The Associated Press
Friday, November 11, 2005
Edition: METROPOLITAN, Section: METROPOLITAN, Page B4

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By David A. Lieb

JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt on Thursday ordered a review of Medicaid transportation procedures after the death of a southwest Missouri man.

Willie Reed, 63, was found dead Tuesday evening at his home in Republic. The kidney-transplant patient was supposed to have been picked up early that morning by a state Medicaid transportation provider to meet with doctors at a St. Louis hospital.

The ride apparently never showed up.

A friend, Agnes Hayward, found Reed dead near his front door with his packed bags, Springfield television station KOLR reported Wednesday. Republic police investigators think Reed died before his scheduled 4 a.m. pickup by OATS Southwest, the TV station reported. But that is under review.

"We want to find out exactly the timeline of events in terms of when he requested a ride, when the service provider was notified he needed a ride, why he wasn't given a ride and what kind of procedures LogistiCare is using to notify its subcontractors when a ride is needed," Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson said.

Atlanta-based LogistiCare Solutions LLC took over the state's $25.6 million contract for nonemergency Medicaid transportation services Saturday. But it had trouble negotiating arrangements with some of the subcontractors who previously worked with Lake St. Louis-based Medical Transportation Management Inc.

Tuesday was supposed to be the first day OATS Inc. was providing service under the new LogistiCare contract.

Department of Social Services spokeswoman Deborah Scott said LogistiCare had received a request to provide Reed a ride and had referred it to OATS by fax and e-mail. But she said the department knew little beyond that.

The Springfield OATS office referred questions to its Columbia office, and the executive director there did not immediately return a telephone call Thursday.

LogistiCare spokesman Ed Domansky said it was unclear what, if any, connection existed between Reed's death and his missed ride.

"LogistiCare is cooperating with the state in its investigation of this unfortunate incident," Domansky said.

Blunt said he expects a report from the Department of Social Services by the end of the month, which will probably include information from the local medical examiner's office, a timeline of events, details of the contractor's responsibilities, and recommendations.

"My heartfelt sympathies go out to Willie Reed's family and friends," Blunt said in a written statement. "I understand they want answers, and so do I."

First glance

A Republic, Mo., man who was a kidney-transplant patient died while waiting for a Medicaid ride to a St. Louis hospital.

A new Missouri Medicaid transportation provider took over Saturday. It had trouble making arrangements with some subcontractors who had worked with the previous provider.

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Missouri plans investigation into Medicaid transit

By Kelly Wiese

Source: KCS
Credit: The Associated Press
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Edition: MID-AMERICA, Section: METROPOLITAN, Page B8

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JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt's administration asked the attorney general Wednesday to look into concerns that companies are breaking the law in negotiations with the firm that gives Medicaid patients rides.

The state in October awarded the contract for nonemergency medical trips for Medicaid patients to Georgia-based Logisticare Solutions LLC.

That company is to start providing rides Saturday.

Blunt's Office of Administration said it heard reports from Logisticare and others that the subcontractors would only negotiate as a group to try and drive up the price, which it said could violate state or federal anti-trust laws.

The attorney general's office "can best decide whether or not there's a problem and what action needs to be taken," Office of Administration chief counsel Henry Herschel said.

Logisticare spokesman Ed Domansky said the company already had found enough van and cab companies to handle 80 percent of the traffic volume expected Monday, when demand is higher.

The company expects to have enough contractors to handle trips Saturday, but the issue still needs to be investigated, he said.

Some subcontractors complain that the new contract's rates are too low and that the potential fines for running late are too high for them to work for Logisticare.

Sondra Smith, who owns J&S Medical in Clinton, said Logisticare won't negotiate with her or other businesses.

"The contract is so designed that they will be keeping all the money and the vendors get nothing," she said.

The Missouri Transportation Coalition, which includes about 40 vendors, has an attorney to help with contract negotiations, but Smith said that each company has its own requirements and costs, and that there wasn't a set of demands from the entire group.

"We're not price fixing; we're not colluding," she said.

Domansky said the company is trying to work with vendors.

"We have been reaching out for several weeks now to every possible transportation provider, inviting them to be part of our transportation network," he said.

"Some of them have not returned phone calls, or some have actually said they won't work with us."

Administration Commissioner Michael Keathley said in his letter that the subcontractors' actions could make it difficult to provide the transportation service.

Attorney General Jay Nixon's office said only that it had received the letter but not the contract Wednesday afternoon.

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Medicaid contract awarded

Source: KCS
Credit: The Kansas City Star
Thursday, October 6, 2005
Edition: METROPOLITAN,
Section: METROPOLITAN, Page B3

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JEFFERSON CITY - Missouri awarded a contract Wednesday for medical transportation services for the poor, choosing a company that won the business last year but lost it after protests by another bidder.

The Office of Administration said it chose Atlanta-based LogistiCare Inc. for the new contract to provide Medicaid patients with nonemergency rides to places such as doctor's offices.

The contract will cost the state $25.6 million a year.

That compares with $40.4 million the state paid in the last fiscal year to the current contractor, Medical Transportation Management Inc. of Lake St. Louis, Mo.

Last week, the attorney general's office announced that Medical Transportation Management was paying $2.4 million to resolve a state investigation.

Attorney General Jay Nixon said he looked into concerns about Medicaid fraud, contract problems and antitrust violations.

MTM said its contract had been a good deal for the state, which paid a flat monthly rate even as the clients served and the number of trips grew.

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Audit finds overspending for Medicaid, transportation expenses

By Tim Hoover

Source: KCS
Credit: The Kansas City Star
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Edition: METROPOLITAN, Section: METROPOLITAN, Page B1

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JEFFERSON CITY - The state of Missouri could save millions of dollars by properly bidding and monitoring Medicaid services for medical equipment and non-emergency transportation, according to an audit released Monday.

The report released by state Auditor Claire McCaskill followed an announcement last week by Attorney General Jay Nixon that his office had settled a fraud case against the company that has been providing non-emergency transportation for Medicaid recipients to places like doctors' offices and pharmacies.

In that case, Lake St. Louis-based Medical Transportation Management Inc. agreed to pay the state $2.4 million after Nixon's office alleged the company had overbilled or fraudulently billed the state for Medicaid clients' trips to medical providers.

The actions of McCaskill and Nixon, both Democrats, come at a time when a Republican-led commission of lawmakers is studying how to restructure the state's Medicaid program, which covers nearly 1 million people. The GOP-controlled legislature earlier this year eliminated Medicaid coverage for about 90,000 people, and much of the debate on the issue has centered on fraud by recipients.

McCaskill said Monday there is not enough emphasis on fraud by providers.

"The vast majority ... of Medicaid fraud that has been found has been ... perpetrated by providers, not by recipients," she said. "Frankly, I think it is tiresome to most Missourians to continue to have this rhetoric that the Medicaid problem should be borne on the backs of recipients."

Deborah Scott, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services, said the agency does not give any more weight to fraud by providers than it does to fraud by recipients.

"We have always viewed the issue of waste, fraud and abuse from both ends of the spectrum," Scott said.

Though McCaskill's audit examined practices that occurred under Democratic Gov. Bob Holden's administration, she said Republican Gov. Matt Blunt's administration has not corrected some of the problems she pointed out.

McCaskill's audit examined a 15-month period ending in March of 2004 in which the state paid Medical Transportation Management $44.1 million, of which at least $19 million was gross profit. The audit said the state did not properly monitor the contract with the company to determine whether it was finding the most appropriate transportation at the lowest cost.

In fact, the report said, the contract with the company often gave it an incentive to use the most expensive mode of travel, obtaining taxi rides for Medicaid clients or encouraging recipients to drive themselves and be reimbursed for mileage. Those options frequently were not the cheapest for taxpayers, the audit noted.

In one case, the company reimbursed a client $3.60 for a 24-mile trip and then charged the state $98.44 for administrative services on the trip, the report said. During the 15-month period, the company made an 87 percent gross profit on mileage reimbursements, the report said.

The state has put the contract for medical transportation out for re-bid and has received seven bids, which officials are reviewing now.

The Department of Social Services last year put the contract out for re-bid, and the state awarded the contract to LogistiCare Solutions LLC of Atlanta. However, the state then voided the contract after Medical Transportation Management argued there were technical irregularities in the bidding process.

The state has been contracting with Medical Transportation Management on a month-to-month basis since then.

Carol Rosse, director of corporate marketing for the Lake St. Louis company, called the results of McCaskill's report erroneous because the audit was based on a time before the company was operating under a stricter contract.

The company "has done everything in its power to make the non-emergency medical transportation program more cost efficient," Rosse said.

McCaskill's report also said the contract did not have controls to ensure that the trips were for Medicaid-related purposes. For one three-month period, there were 14,500 transportation claims that had no corresponding Medicaid claims filed with the state, the report said.

The audit also said that the new contract proposal the state was developing could be flawed because it was based on "historically high" costs in previous contracts with Medical Transportation Management. Scott said the previous rates were just one factor in developing the new contract, and Commissioner of Administration Mike Keathley said there would be a substantial savings over previous contracts.

The audit also found that Missouri could save $5.4 million a year if it competitively bid its medical equipment services.

Missouri paid more than its eight surrounding states for 41 percent of the pieces of equipment reviewed in the audit. In one example, a prosthetic device that four other states paid $1,830 for cost Missouri $2,440.

The department is considering taking competitive bids on the equipment, Scott said.

To reach Tim Hoover, call 1-(573)-634-3565 or send e-mail to thoover@kcstar.com.

First glance

Though a recent report examined practices that occurred under Democratic Gov. Bob Holden's administration, she said Republican Gov. Matt Blunt's administration has not corrected some of the problems she pointed out.

g)

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Transport companies clash at state hearing

By Tim Hoover

Source: KCS
Credit: The Kansas City Star
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Edition: METROPOLITAN,
Section: METROPOLITAN, Page B8

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JEFFERSON CITY - Two companies fighting over a state contract to provide transportation to hundreds of thousands of Missourians on Medicaid sparred at a hearing Tuesday.

One of the companies, LogistiCare Solutions LLC, based in Atlanta, said the state's newest specifications for the contract had set up a "monopolistic" environment. LogistiCare said it was impossible for anyone but the company that holds the current contract, Medical Transportation Management Inc., of Lake St. Louis, to win.

At stake is millions of taxpayer dollars that will be spent on the contract for the next three years to transport more than 400,000 poor and elderly Missourians to medical appointments.

Medical Transportation Management has provided the service to the state for the last six years, receiving $35.6 million last year. The company finds transportation through its network of subcontractors across the state.

In an attempt to reduce costs, the state Department of Social Services rewrote the contract specifications last summer and took competitive bids.

The state awarded the contract to LogistiCare, which bid $22.9 million a year, $1.6 million less than Medical Transportation Management's bid.

But in June, state officials voided the contract, which was to take effect in July, after Medical Transportation Management officials complained about irregularities in the bid process. LogistiCare sued the state, saying the state's action was based on a technicality that shouldn't void a contract won through fair bidding.

In late June, the state hired Medical Transportation Management to provide transportation services until the contract is rebid and awarded.

In August, the state paid the company $3.8 million, or an average of $121,647 a day. In September the company received $100,000 a day.

Under the contract with LogistiCare, the state would have paid $72,328 a day, based upon the most recent count of eligible clients.

On Tuesday, officials with the two companies appeared at a hearing held by the Division of Medical Services and the Division of Purchasing and Materials Management.

LogistiCare officials argued that language the state added to the new request for proposals was unfairly tilted toward Medical Transportation Management. The new specifications require the successful bidder to submit a list of all its subcontractors and the rate it is paying them.

It also requires that the bidder furnish copies of all letters of intent to do business that it may have from potential subcontractors.

The state put out the new bid specifications Nov. 4. On Nov. 5, Medical Transportation Management sent out a letter to its subcontractors saying that it would increase their payments if they signed exclusivity agreements pledging not to do business with the company's competitors.

Harvey Tettlebaum, an attorney for LogistiCare, argued that no subcontractors were willing to sign letters of intent with LogistiCare because of the exclusivity agreements. "If you don't take this (language) out," Tettlebaum said at the hearing, "no one else is going to be able to competitively bid."

Peg Griswold, who with her husband, Lynn, owns Medical Transportation Management, said no subcontractors were forced to sign the exclusivity agreement. She said the agreements were necessary to protect her company's network of transportation providers.

"That is our personal product," she said. "That is what we developed. Any bidder is free to create their own product. This is ours."

Sandra Levels, director of program management for the Division of Medical Services, said the language was added to address the concerns of the subcontractors, who were worried about getting a fair rate. The audience in the hearing room mainly consisted of transportation service providers, several of whom said that their livelihoods were at stake. One man said they had heard "horror stories" about LogistiCare.

LogistiCare officials suggested that Medical Transportation Management officials may have had a hand in motivating their subcontractors to seek new language.

Griswold said it was "totally 100 percent untrue" that her company had orchestrated the effort.

The state now is considering whether there will be any changes to the request for proposals. The companies have until Dec. 14 to submit their proposals, but the awarding of the contract might not come for months after that.

To reach Tim Hoover, call 1-(573) 634-3565 or send e-mail to thoover@kcstar.com.

First glance

LogistiCare Solutions LLC says the state has set up a "monopolistic" environment favoring its competitor, Medical Transportation Management Inc.

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