Things you might have missed while you were...you know..chasing an albino squirrel. Come on man.

This first one is a bit of a doozy too, from the Supreme Court. Those personal injury awards will be eligible for future 'clawback'. Wowzers! So that slightly lofty settlement you won with an ambulance chaser, might go straight to Medicaid to cover your future costs. Ouch! Daddy Sugar wants a piece of yo munny hunny.

Supreme Court's Medicaid clawback ruling could mean less money for state programs, critics say

Critics of a June 6 U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving Medicaid clawbacks from personal injury litigation wins say the decision could result in less money for state Medicaid programs, Bloomberg reported June 10.

The court ruled that states can seek reimbursements for future medical care from Medicaid beneficiaries who win money in personal injury litigation. Plaintiffs in the case argued states can only tap into the money for past expenses. Seven of the court's nine judges disagreed, however. Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the court's majority opinion, said the Medicaid Act distinguishes "only between medical and nonmedical care, not between past (paid) medical care payments and future (unpaid) medical care payments."

Stanford Law professor Nora Engstrom told Bloomberg the decision "absolutely will reduce litigants' incentives to bring personal injury lawsuits."

Paul Cannon, a shareholder with Houston-based personal injury firm Simmons Fletcher PC, told Bloomberg the decision could be "devastating for plaintiffs in small-dollar personal injury cases."

"If I'm looking at a case with a maximum recovery of $10,000 or $20,000, there isn't very much money available after you've paid the expenses and subtracted the state's share for medical expenses that have already been paid," he told Bloomberg. "And now if the state comes in to take from the money for future medical (costs), there's even less. A lot of these cases will never be brought."

Discouraging Medicaid-involved lawsuits could mean less money flowing into state Medicaid programs, Mr. Cannon said.

"They could pay dearly for the larger share of a shrinking pie," he said

So the Roe v Wade is small potatoes for some now. Wallet-wise, leastwise. But many of those stem cell and umbilical cord injections many have received are being 'clawed' back to Medicare. Could be big Buck-o-s owed back. And you know when Daddy Sugar comes looking for his munny hunny, he ain't gonna take NO for answer.

Birth Tissue Injection Medicare Clawback Quickly Expands to the ENTIRE Nation





Yesterday I discussed that the Medicare Administrator for the state of Florida had decided to claw back all payments for birth tissue injections going back to 2019. I theorized that it wouldn’t be long until the other Medicare regions did the same. Well here we are a day later and I have now learned that every single Administrator in all 50 states has initiated the same clawback. This is a HUGE problem if you billed Medicare for this stuff and probably an even bigger problem if you were injected as a patient. Let’s dig in.

What’s Going On?

Since about 2019 we have noted several shady birth tissue vendors who were selling Amniotic, Placental, and Umbilical Cord “stem cells” were directing Physicians to bill these injections to Medicare for the treatment of things like painful knee arthritis or spinal problems. This made little sense, as while the companies had been able to pull a fast one by getting reimbursement Q-codes issued in error, the Medicare guidelines for each region (called an LCD) didn’t say that this stuff was covered. Despite that, these companies hired one of several billing firms to game the Medicare system to get these products paid.

Another problem is that based on independent research conducted by our lab, CSU, Cornell, and UC Davis, there were no living and functional stem cells in these products. However, while that’s simple fraud both on the part of the vendors and clinics, there’s a much bigger problem with billing Medicare for stuff that’s not covered. First, it’s illegal and punishable by 10 years in federal prison for each bill submitted and paid in error (assuming you knew that it wasn’t covered). Second, anything that Medicare pays you is subject to repayment (called a “clawback”).

The Birth Tissue Injection Clawback Is Now the ENTIRE Nation

As of yesterday, I believed that the clawback was just the state of Florida. However, I was contacted by a Medicare insider who informed me that EVERY Medicare region has issued the same clawback notice (called a Denial-links to all regional policies below):

• WPS (Midwest)
• NGS (New England)
• CGS (Ohio and Kentucky)
• Novitas (Texas, CO, NM, AR, LA, OK, MS)
• Noridian (Western half of US)
• Palmetto (Southeast)
• First Coast (Florida)

Yikes!

What this Means

This is nothing less than a country-wide takedown of these billing practices. It’s very difficult to get many different MACs to agree on everything, but these clawbacks are all singing from the same sheet music. Given the precision and coordinated strike here, we can expect that the next shoe to drop will be the Justice Department. Because of the immense scale of this fraud (in the 300-500+ million USD range), there is no way that the feds are going to let everyone get off with just a repayment. Especially since it was very clear that these companies knew that what they were doing was dancing on the dangerous edge of Medicare fraud statutes.

What Can I Do if I Fell for this Song and Dance?

If you’re a provider and you were paid by Medicare, you probably owe an immense amount of money back. First, contact a qualified healthcare Attorney with experience in defending Medicare fraud cases. Also, begin to get your financial house in order to repay every dime you were paid. Finally, count your blessings if your demand letter only discusses repayment and not criminal charges.

If you’re a patient, it all depends on a document called an Advance Beneficiary Notice or ABN. If you signed that document in the new patient paperwork, you owe every dollar paid by Medicare back to the clinic. That’s going to be painful as that’s $4,000 per body part injected. Hence, if the clinic injected both knees and a shoulder in one visit and later injected an ankle and a wrist, that’s $20,000 that you are legally obligated to repay to the clinic. That money will be used to repay Medicare.

If you never signed an ABN, then you owe nothing and this is the clinic’s problem. Meaning it’s illegal for the clinic to bill you.

Hence, if you’re a patient, your first call should be to the clinic that performed the injections. Ask if they have an ABN on file for you. If the answer is “NO”, you’re good. If the answer is “YES” then that’s a serious problem.

If you suddenly owe tens of thousands of dollars back to a clinic that scammed you into thinking you were getting a “stem cell” injection covered by Medicare then my next move would be to call my State Attorney General’s office. If enough people complain, my guess is that these state offices will begin to file criminal charges or civil lawsuits against these clinics and you likely won’t owe anything back.

On the upside, many of those personal injury lawyers may have some available billable hours to assist.

What goes up, must eventually come down. Though buying opportunities will abound - at some point

Real estate firms Compass and Redfin announce layoffs as housing market slows

• In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Compass announced a 10% cut to its workforce, and Redfin announced an 8% cut.
• Mortgage rates have taken off since the start of this year, rising from 3.29% in early January to 6.28% now, according to Mortgage News Daily.
• Home sales have been dropping for several straight months, and the fall is expected to worsen.

...

To clarify: Comirnaty was never produced. Anyone forced, coerced, threatened or mandated to take the 'clot' shot was doing so under a temporary Emergence Use Authorization (EUA), which as you may recall, shields the manufacturer from liability and does NOT constitute informed consent, as defined by the Nuremberg Code - IMHO

Ghost Shot: Pfizer quietly admits it will never manufacture original FDA approved COVID vaccines

Company claims it is manufacturing Comirnaty product with new formula.
Jordan Schachtel
Jun 3
The August 23, 2021 FDA approval of Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine was a cause for celebration. Marked as a turning point in the battle against COVID19, the announcement was highly publicized by the Biden Administration with the clear intention to extinguish “vaccine hesitancy” and boost uptake.

It was celebrated as a cause for national relief, and many Americans arrived at their local pharmacies under the impression, via government and pharmaceutical propaganda, that they were receiving an FDA-approved COVID vaccine. Yet that legally distinct product, as we know it, never existed. And now we know, via Pfizer, that it will never exist.

For the uninitiated:

Comirnaty is a legally distinct product from the emergency use authorization (EUA) shots, and It has never made its way to market. For months on end, no such vaccine has ever become available. Those who received the “Pfizer shot(s)” have been injected with the emergency use authorization (EUA) version of the shots. See my piece in The Dossier for more info:

Shell Game? There remains no FDA approved COVID vaccine in the United States
Is Pfizer is using children as legal human shields to get full authorization?

I fact checked the fact checkers and couldn’t believe what I found. Despite the corporate press, Big Pharma, and the federal government telling us otherwise, it is absolutely true that there is no FDA approved COVID-19 vaccine available in the United States today. And there are no plans to make one available any time soon.

The information operation succeeded. There was indeed an FDA approved vaccine, at least on paper, but you couldn’t get it.

When originally confronted with this ordeal, Pfizer labeled this issue an inventory question that had nothing to do with the legal distinction between an experimental EUA product and an FDA-approved vaccine. Up until just weeks ago, this was the statement up on the CDC website via Pfizer:

“Pfizer received FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename.

At present, Pfizer does not plan to produce any product with these new NDCs and labels over the next few months while EUA authorized product is still available and being made available for U.S. distribution. As such, the CDC, AMA, and drug compendia may not publish these new codes until Pfizer has determined when the product will be produced with the BLA labels.”

In May, Pfizer updated its statement to mention a December 2021 licensed Comicality product, which was granted a license four months after the highly-publicized August FDA press release.

And just last week, Pfizer finally acknowledged that its original licensed product will never be distributed. In an unreported update on the CDC website, Pfizer told the agency:

“Pfizer received initial FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename. These NDCs will not be manufactured. Only NDCs for the subsequently BLA approved tris-sucrose formulation will be produced.”

The key distinction between the originally approved formulation and the tris-sucrose formulation is that — according to manufacturers — the latter can be held for a much longer period of time outside of an ultra cold freezer. These freezers cost over $10,000 a piece and each unit uses as much energy per day as an average American household. Improper storage can render the mRNA unstable.

Notably, the clinical trials for the Pfizer shot were conducted without the modified tris-sucrose ingredient. Given the partisan nature of Pfizer, the corporate media, government health bureaucracies, and your correspondent’s lack of expertise in this area, it is unclear whether this is significant.

Another notable thing to look out for in the coming days and weeks is the possibility that the subsequently FDA approved product finally becomes available in the United States. In recent days, the CDC removed the language of “not orderable at this time” above the description of both Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax.

Additionally, as reported by Uncover DC, the Defense Department appears to be in the early stages of ordering what it has interpreted as a legally required minimum of Comirnaty in order to continue its mRNA mandate of American service members.

Some days you get the bear, other days you get laid bare.

Incarcerated Creepy Porn lawyer Michael Avenatti on Thursday pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud and tax-related charges in a federal court in Orange County, California.

By Cristina Laila
Published June 16, 2022 at 3:14pm
Avenatti has already been convicted twice of embezzling funds from former clients such as Nike and Stormy Daniels.

Avenatti, the liberal media darling, is facing roughly five years in prison for his previous convictions.

Thursday’s charges carry a long prison sentence as well as restitution. The judge still has not determined Avenatti’s sentence in Thursday’s guilty plea.

Avenatti is scheduled to be sentenced on September 19.

CBS News reported:

Avenatti, who had already been convicted in New York of embezzling funds from former client and adult film actress Stormy Daniels, pleaded guilty Thursday to four counts of wire fraud and a single count of tax fraud, admitting he misappropriated funds from multiple clients.

Prosecutors had alleged the Newport Beach attorney defrauded at least five clients of nearly $10 million in settlement funds between January 2015 and March 2019 to save his law firm from bankruptcy, fend off creditors, and spend money on himself.

Avenatti made an open plea in the case, meaning there was no prior agreement with prosecutors on a possible sentence. The charges could mean several years in federal prison and restitution topping $10 million, but U.S. District Judge James Selna will make the final determination on an appropriate sentence. Avenatti is tentatively scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 19.

“After pleading guilty today, Avenatti still faces a total of 31 counts – six wire fraud charges, 18 tax-related charges, two counts of bank fraud related to alleged false statements he made in an attempt to obtain loans from a federally insured financial institution, one count of aggravated identity theft for misusing the name of a tax preparer in relation to the bank fraud scheme, and four counts of bankruptcy fraud related to alleged false statements he made after his law firm was forced into bankruptcy.” the DOJ said.

Technically, this should have gone into the Jan 6 thread, because Avantii was a purported front runner instead of F Joe Biden, but I got the OP's permission to post it here as a little noticed news nugget.

.... Hee Hee! ... ... Avenatti was calling Stormy
a liar also - just like Trump did.

#### Salty

Queue the salty tears from the libbies

Supreme Court rules for Sen. Cruz in campaign finance case

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court's conservative majority sided Monday with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and struck down a provision of federal campaign finance law, a ruling that a dissenting justice said runs the risk of causing “further disrepute” to American politics.

What You Need To Know

• The Supreme Court has sided with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and struck down a provision of federal campaign finance law
• By a 6-3 vote, said the provision Cruz challenged limiting the repayment of personal loans from candidates to their campaigns violates the Constitution
• Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that the provision “burdens core political speech without proper justification”
• It's a ruling that a dissenting justice says runs the risk of causing “further disrepute” to American politics

...

BTW: The Biden regime was for it, not against it.

U.S. Supreme Court rejects bail hearings for detained immigrants

• Supreme Court rejects cases by detainees seeking to argue for release
• Immigrants can be detained for years amid deportation proceedings

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled non-citizens can be detained indefinitely under federal immigration law without bond hearings and that federal judges lack the authority to order the government to release immigrants who have been detained without hearings on a class-wide basis.

In an 8-1 ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not require immigration judges to hold bond hearings after six months to determine if a non-citizen should be released while their case proceeds or is a flight risk or danger to the community.

Agreeing with the Biden administration, Sotomayor said there was "no plausible construction of the text" of the statute that would mandate the government provide for such bond hearings and that the law did not even hint at such a requirement....

Seems that parents can now choose which school cafeteria their children get to eat in. Yum!

Supreme Court Hands Down Huge Victory on School Choice

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Tuesday morning that government tuition assistance programs cannot discriminate against religious schools. The opinion is from Carson v. Makin, a case out of Maine.

"Maine has enacted a program of tuition assistance for parents who live in school districts that do not operate a secondary school of their own. Under the program, parents designate the secondary school they would like their child to attend—public or private—and the school district transmits payments to that school to help defray the costs of tuition. Most private schools are eligible to receive the payments, so long as they are 'nonsectarian,'" the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, states. "The question presented is whether this restriction violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment."

"The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects against 'indirect coercion or penalties on the free exercise of religion, not just outright prohibitions,'" the opinion states. "A State’s antiestablishment interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise."...

Score card:
Dirty Little People = 1, F Joe Biden = 0

SCOTUS Rules 9-0 That Biden’s HHS Violated Drug Reimbursement Rules For Low-Income Patients

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services violated drug reimbursement rules for low-income patients.

According to The Epoch Times, the court unanimously ruled that HHS, which is led by former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, illegally cut prescription drug reimbursements to hospitals by $1.6 billion per year in connection with a program that was established to help poorer patients.

The decision is considered a victory for hospitals that serve low-income patients, the outlet reported, and will now allow them to seek the funds they were denied by Becerra’s agency...

The 2nd Amendment takes center stage!

Supreme Court Strikes Down New York’s Proper Cause Requirement for Concealed Carry

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled 6-3 on June 23 that New York’s proper cause requirement for concealed carry permit issuance is unconstitutional.

New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA) v. Bruen centered on denials for permits under New York’s concealed carry permitting law. The NYSRPA filed suit claiming that one of its members was eligible for a permit but was denied because of New York’s requirement that concealed carry applicants prove why they need to carry a gun.

The case ultimately dealt with the scope of the Second Amendment — whether the right to keep and bear arms applies only in the home or outside the home as well.

When SCOTUS granted cert in the case the NYSRPA responded:

This case challenges New York’s requirement that applicants demonstrate “proper cause” to carry a firearm. New York regularly uses this requirement to deny applicants the right to carry a firearm outside of their home. The NRA believes that law-abiding citizens should not be required to prove they are in peril to receive the government’s permission to exercise this constitutionally protected right.

NRA-ILA director Jason Ouimet also commented on the suit after the Supreme Court agreed to hear it:

Under current New York law, a law-abiding resident becomes a felon the moment he or she steps outside their home with their firearm. This is a clear infringement of the Second Amendment. The NRA is grateful that the Supreme Court is tackling this critical issue. We are proud to be a part of this case, and we look forward to a future in which law-abiding Americans everywhere have the fundamental right to self-defense the way the Constitution intended.

The immediate impact of the June 23 ruling is that New York’s proper cause requirement is struck down. What is yet to be seen is how this decision will impact other states–like California and New Jersey, both of which have concealed carry issuance guidelines similar to New York’s proper cause requirement–and whether the success of NYSRPA .v Bruen leads to suits against those states as well.

The case is NYSRPA v. Bruen, No. 20-843, in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Naw, juss fun'n ya. It was instantaneous.

Keith Olbermann Calls for Supreme Court to Be Dissolved over Pro-2A Ruling

Sports commentator Keith Olbermann responded to the Supreme Court’s pro-Second Amendment ruling Thursday by calling for the high court to be dissolved.

Breitbart News reported that SCOTUS struck down New York’s proper cause requirement for concealed carry, noting that the right to possess a gun for self-defense inside the home also applies to carrying a gun outside the home for personal safety.

Olbermann reacted by tweeting: “It has become necessary to dissolve the Supreme Court of the United States. The first step is for a state the ‘court’ has now forced guns upon, to ignore this ruling. Great. You’re a court? Why and how do think you can enforce your rulings?”

Eight minutes later he revealed his newest thought: “Hey SCOTUS, send the SCOTUS army here to enforce your ruling, you House of Lords radicals pretending to be a court...

Could just be me, but that sounds like an -- insurrectionist.

Well.. there they go again. Reports are that the latest gun control bill was distributed to the media before the other Senators. And they will not stop with that bill either. The slippy slope is for real -- according to the Demonicrats.

Klobuchar: Senate Gun Bill ‘Paves the Way’ for Other Gun Control Measures

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) argued that the Senate gun legislation “paves the way in the future to look at” other gun control provisions.

Host Anderson Cooper asked, “Well, there [are] probably a lot of people who wanted this to — obviously, you said you wanted this to go farther in terms of gun safety or gun control. What do you say to those who say that this doesn’t go far enough and that this may make it harder to try to get further changes in the future?”

Klobuchar responded, “We have worked on this for decades. And after Parkland, I sat across from Donald Trump at the White House, along with a number of senators, he said he was going to do something about background checks. I still have the piece of paper, eight times, nine times, he said it…nothing happened. After Sandy Hook, nothing happened. And when you talk to the families who have been working on this for so long, they understand how difficult this has been, how disappointing this has been. So, to start with something that’s going to save lives, even if a particular provision wouldn’t have saved their own babies’ lives, that is an act of love and generosity of spirit that you hear from the families of those that have lost loved ones. That’s why we’re moving ahead. And I think it actually paves the way in the future to look at some of these other provisions. But if you do nothing and you just go home, then we’ve got nothing. And that’s why it’s so important to pass this bill on a bipartisan basis.”

You know how they say when you're in a hole - quit digging? Well... appears the Supremes have decided that you should know your rights -- your own damn self. Looks like no more squirming out of your own words - even if the cops did not read you your rights. Might be prudent to download a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Right before you go out and do stupid stuff. Other wise, you might get the Shaft.

Supreme Court Issues Ruling, Gutting Miranda Rights And Threatening The Fifth Amendment

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Vega V Tekoh, a case involving the administration of Miranda rights, with the court ruling that a suspect’s words or statements can be used in court regardless of their Miranda rights.

For background, these are the facts of the case in question:

Terence Tekoh worked as a patient transporter in a hospital in Los Angeles. After a patient accused him of sexual assault, hospital staff reported the allegation to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Deputy Carlos Vega went to the hospital to ask Tekoh questions and take Tekoh’s statement. Although the parties described vastly different accounts of the nature of the interaction between Tekoh and Vega, it is undisputed that Vega did not advise Tekoh of his Miranda rights before questioning him or taking his statement.

Tekoh was arrested and charged in California state court, but a jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Following the acquittal on the criminal charge, Tekoh sued Vega, alleging that Vega violated Tekoh’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by taking his statement without first advising him of his Miranda rights.

Justice Samuel Alito issued his ruling, a count of 6-3, deciding that using such statements outside of Miranda rights is not a violation of a defendant’s rights and does not give them the right to sue the court for such use.

Miranda prescribed a specific and protective set of warnings to ensure that criminally accused suspects were made aware of the Fifth Amendment’s decree that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

Miranda is also one of the court’s most culturally famous decisions. Americans know Miranda. More accurately: Americans know their Miranda warnings. Even if they cannot recite the lyrics to the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance, they likely can recite Miranda’s warnings:

• You have the right to remain silent;
• Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law;
• You have the right to a lawyer;
• If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you.

Generally, if the police obtain a suspect’s statement violating Miranda, the government cannot use that statement against the defendant in court.

But can the defendant later sue the police for violating the defendant’s constitutional rights?

The Supreme Court now says, No...

Not sure I like it, i.e. forcing a State to allow a particular manner which they have banned. Also, not a fan that a condemned to die murder should have a choice in the matter either. Did they give their victims acceptable and Constitutional options to Pursue Life, Liberty and Happiness for example? Futt Buck him!

The upshot is that the Lef-Tards immediately went into Rage-n-Whine mode and flooded social media with their Salty Tears.

Supreme Court Allows Georgia Inmate on Death Row to Die by Firing Squad

The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of an inmate on death row choosing a firing squad as per his request.

In another ruling released today, the Supreme Court decided to allow a death row inmate a firing squad.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of allowing a Georgia death row inmate to alter his execution method from lethal injection to firing squad .

In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Elena Kagan , the high court ruled that inmate Michael Nance’s medical aversion to the use of lethal injection is well within his constitutional rights under the Eighth Amendment , which prevents cruel and unusual punishment.

“A prisoner must identify a readily available alternative method of execution that would significantly reduce the risk of severe pain. In doing so, the prisoner is not confined to proposing a method authorized by the executing State’s law; he may instead ask for a method used in other States,” Kagan wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett lead a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. Her argument was that the only manner in which to perform capital punishment in the state is by lethal injection. She said the state doesn’t allow for a firing squad and to do so would go against the state law on the matter...