On 7/14/2015 3:25 AM, dsi1 wrote:
> On Monday, July 13, 2015 at 5:23:19 AM UTC-10, sf wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 02:21:11 -0700 (PDT), dsi1 <>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I think it's grand but I can't say i

Jeb Bush personally lobbied the secretary of health and human services
while his father was vice president on behalf of a hospital executive
who would later be accused of defrauding the government of hundreds of
millions of Medicare dollars, The Huffington Post has confirmed.

Miguel Recarey, head of International Medical Centers (IMC), also paid
Bush $75,000 in the mid-1980s, money that Bush acknowledges receiving
but says was tendered for real estate consultation.

With the GOP presidential campaign now focused on Tuesday’s Florida
primary, attention has turned to Jeb Bush, the popular former Florida
governor, as observers analyze his every move for signs of a possible
endorsement — or wonder whether Bush himself will wind up the nominee
after a brokered political convention.
In 1992, as his father, President George H.W. Bush, ran for reelection,
Jeb Bush denied having reached out to HHS Secretary Margaret Heckler on
Recarey’s behalf, a denial he maintains through a spokeswoman to this
day. Bush said that he only spoke to a lower-level HHS official to ask
that Recarey be given a “fair hearing” with regard to his application to
renew a waiver that allowed IMC to receive more than 50 percent of its
revenue from Medicare. (The waiver had been granted as part of an HMO
pilot project that was set to expire. The renewal was ultimately not
granted.)

But now former Secretary Heckler herself, in an interview with HuffPost,
has confirmed that Jeb Bush lobbied her, that she was in favor of
renewing the waiver (although she left office before doing so) and that
his input played a major role in her thinking.