Former Speaker of the House and Republican politician, Newt Gingrich tweeted last week that he agreed with a recent article by the Tennessee Lookout that Ballad Health CEO, Alan Levine, is “a person to watch” in 2022.
First, Newt, what you call “innovative”, some medical providers have called “unsafe” and experts have said will leave patients without timely, safe access to life-saving care.
Second, I question your statement regarding “providing care for the poor”.
Rather than respond to the poverty in our region, Mr. Levine and Ballad Health have actively helped create it by suing thousands of poor people in rural northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia in their first year. In fact, they have filed over 44,000 lawsuits against people in the region since 2009.
Now, if those things are true, you may be wondering what in the world I agree with Newt on, right?
Well, it’s the Alan Levine part.
He’s definitely a person to surveil… I mean, watch in 2022.
The Tennessee Lookout was right to take note of Mr. Levine’s power as the CEO of the country’s largest state-blessed medical monopoly that courtesy of legislation sponsored by Ballad’s in-house State Senator, has protections from federal antitrust enforcement. They were also right on the money to note Alan’s political affiliations. You don’t get your own page on the Federalist Society’s Contributors website page for no reason.
But if history is anything to go on, there are other reasons we might want to keep an eye on Mr. Levine.
His introduction to healthcare was an internship at Columbia/HCA being mentored by Rick Scott.
Not sure what why that’s significant?
Well, it’s because Columbia/HCA was raided by the FBI in 1997 and found guilty of the largest Medicare/Medicaid fraud in United States history in 2000 & 2002 to the tune of $1.7 Billion Dollars. Levine was there, having made his way up the ranks to hold executive level positions from 1992–2003.
Let me be clear, I am in no way saying that Levine committed or participated in fraud.
I am simply making an observation regarding his employment history and the kind of company he kept (or the kind of company that kept him).
And on that note, it might be worth mentioning that his next stint in the private healthcare sector, while brief, was also with a system that has been found guilty of fraud. There is even a whistleblower lawsuit that alleges Levine was part of a kickback scheme by 21st Century Oncology to takeover oncology services at Broward Health.
There is a lot to unravel and unpack regarding the healthcare system known as Broward Health and in fairness, much of it has nothing to do with Alan.
Lastly, and the one where Levine became the face defending the allegations of fraud was HMA. He joined the company in 2010 and by December 2012, found himself front and center on 60 minutes rebutting allegations that the healthcare system was pressuring emergency room physicians to admit a specific percentage of patients of a particular age to their hospitals (whether they truly needed to be there or not).
In this 60 minutes clip around the 9 minute mark, you’ll see Levine stammering a bit when confronted with a document provided by an HMA physician which seems to support the allegations. HMA was subsequently found guilty of these allegations and paid over $260 million dollars.
The Department of Justice News Release included the following statement from Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski:
“HMA pressured emergency room physicians, including through threats of termination, to increase the number of inpatient admissions from emergency departments — even when those admissions were medically unnecessary.”
Again, let me reiterate, I am not in any way stating that Levine participated in or was aware of the fraud happening at any of these companies.
Is it possible that he was the Executive Vice President of HMA and was completely unaware of their improper “goals” for hospital admissions? Yes.
Is it possible that the whistleblower lawsuit alleging that former 21st Century Oncology CEO Dr. Daniel Dosoretz promised Levine kickbacks when he was the CEO of Broward Health was false? Sure.
It is possible that these three companies, the only healthcare companies I was able to locate in his employment history prior to his coming to Mountain States Health Alliance (which merged with Wellmont Health Systems to become Ballad Health), all having been found guilty of healthcare fraud is just bad luck? I guess so. So is me not winning the lottery.
You have to admit, it is odd though.
If every bank you worked at (or at least the ones we knew about) got robbed, you might be a “person to watch” too.
