December 2007 - Posts
By Mark Potter, NBC News Correspondent
MIAMI – While reporting on Medicare fraud – the nationwide theft of an estimated $60 billion a year – we keep running into outrageous examples of just how bad it is. The following data from South Florida, where authorities say the problem is the worst in the country right now, just might take the cake:
Federal law enforcement officials investigating in Miami-Dade and Broward counties found that from 2002 to present Medicare paid for 89,803 artificial limbs.
That many artificial limbs in just two counties? OK, they’re big counties, but experts say it's almost pure fraud, and a disgustingly brazen one at that. As one officials said darkly, "I didn't understand we had landmines down here. This is off the charts."
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By John Rutherford, NBC News Producer
Arlington National Cemetery marked a grim milestone today with the burial of its 400th casualty of the war in Iraq.
Navy Chief Petty Officer Mark Carter, 27, of Fallbrook, Calif., was laid to rest the week before Christmas in a ceremony closed to press coverage. He was killed Dec. 11 during combat operations in Iraq.
Four hundred families have now buried their loved ones at Arlington since the cemetery's first Iraq casualty, Army Capt. Russell Rippetoe, was interred on April 10, 2003. Sixty casualties of the war in Afghanistan are also buried at Arlington.
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By Stephanie Himango, NBC News Producer
MIAMI – My dad recently asked me, "What stories are you working on right now?"
"Well, one story is about LEDs . . ." I started to say.
"Oh! Light-emitting diodes!"
I smiled and looked at him sideways. "Yeeesss. How do you know about LEDs?"
He told me about some of the common uses he was aware of, including use in medical instrumentation, VCRs and traffic lights. Turns out, most of us have had exposure to LEDs whether we've been aware of them or not.
NBC News/ Stephanie Himango
White LED lights illuminate the trees of New York City's Rockefeller Center.
LED lighting technology has seen significant advances this year, and has made dramatic inroads in the area of holiday lighting in particular. More advances are necessary – and are on the way – before LEDs are truly integrated for mainstream use, in the way we think about regular incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs.
LEDs are small, but their potential is big.
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By John Rutherford, NBC News Producer
Earlier today, Laura Bush visited sick kids at the Children's National Medical Center, continuing a holiday tradition begun during the Kennedy administration.
The first lady toured a new surgical care unit and spent half an hour with several dozen young patients in the atrium of the hospital in northwest Washington, D.C.
Sitting under a large Christmas tree, she read a version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" that was written in the style of "’Twas the Night Before Christmas," but still had Rudolph's red nose saving the day for everyone.
"’Twas the day before Christmas and all through the hills, the reindeer were playing, enjoying their spills ..."
The first lady then showed the children the latest video featuring Barney and Miss Beazley, the Bush family's Scottish terriers.
VIDEO: BarneyCam Holiday in the National Parks
In this one, Barney and Miss Beazley run around the White House listening to one human after another, including President Bush and Laura Bush and their twin daughters as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, talk about America's national parks and the dogs' hopes to become junior park rangers.
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By Don Teague, NBC News Correspondent
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – During ice storms, destruction rains down on neighborhoods one drop at a time. For hours, nothing seems wrong. One drop falls and freezes. The next drop follows, until a light glaze coats tree limbs and parked cars.
For a while, the roads seem immune to the ice, helped by the earth’s radiant heat. But in an instant, it all changes. Highway overpasses go from simply wet to ice sheets in a matter of seconds. There are traffic accidents, hundreds of them, almost simultaneously throughout the region. Emergency crews become overwhelmed.
Still the drops keep falling, and piling up. Here in Oklahoma, three quarters of an inch of ice has coated everything. It’s more weight than trees can handle, so their limbs snap, sending hundreds of pounds of wood and ice crashing to the ground.
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By Don Teague, NBC News Correspondent
DALLAS – I sat straight up in bed, unsure why, but knowing deep down something was terribly wrong.
"Why am I awake?" I thought to myself. I looked at the clock: 3:10 a.m.
The sudden movement woke my wife. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"I heard something," I said.
Before she could ask what, we both heard it again.
DING-DONG.
It was the doorbell, and this time the dogs heard it too. The house erupted into chaos.
"It’s three o’clock in the morning," my wife said. She has a flair for the obvious.
"I know," I almost shouted, while scrambling out of bed. "This can’t be good."
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By Al Henkel, NBC News Producer
OMAHA, Neb. –
As I drove from the Omaha airport to the Westroads Mall last night, it was a very familiar feeling, driving to a place I didn't know, in the middle of the night, to cover a truly awful story.
It reminded me of other middle of the night drives, after earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, school shootings, other crimes so sick and twisted it would pale any horror movie ever made.
I don’t like horror movies or haunted houses at Halloween. I discourage my kids from both. I tell them, "Life is scary enough." They make fun of me, but I really believe it.
Long before I joined NBC News, I worked in local television as a police and court reporter.
Simply put, I've seen lots of blood on the sidewalk, kids crying for a parent that's never coming home, parents grieving for kids who were in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time.
After all that, it still mystifies me when someone commits homicide: the unlawful taking of a human life as it's known in court.
It really mystifies me when a young person does it. What drove a 19-year-old kid to shoot up a suburban shopping mall?
I know all about teenage angst, I have two teenage boys. They are two and a half years younger than the shooter. I just can't imagine what goes through the mind of someone who kills eight people he's never seen before.
In a few days, we'll leave Omaha, and leave the people here to their pain and grief.
But the thing is, just when you think you've seen the worst, the phone rings, you get on a plane, and find yourself driving through an unfamiliar place, in the middle of the night, to another truly awful story.
By Mark Potter, NBC News Correspondent
MIAMI – A short while ago, while reporting on Medicare fraud – an outrageous $60 billion a year pilferage of America's social safety net for 43 million seniors and the disabled – I took one of those phone calls that stop you right in your tracks.
The caller was a federal law enforcement official who has spent much of his career fighting health care theft. He said a man that he and other authorities had been chasing for allegedly running a crooked medical supply company and bilking Medicare had just had an unfortunate run-in with police near Miami.
He and another man were confronted by officers who suspected them of breaking into cars outside a gaming resort. The other man was arrested, but, according to authorities, the one suspected of Medicare theft ran and dove into a lake, where he was promptly attacked and killed by an alligator! What??
Of course, upon hearing this I thought it was a joke and shouted, "You've got to be kidding!" He wasn't. It was true – the sort of morality tale, it seems, you can only hear in Florida.
As outlandish and unbelievable as that story was, however, it actually pales in comparison to the reality of the brazen, organized and widespread looting of Medicare, which seems all-too-easy prey for criminals hiding behind phony medical supply companies and clinics.
Often they pay off busloads of patients, along with unscrupulous doctors, to assure their cooperation. And in the process, they threaten the future of the already-stressed Medicare system and harm millions of honest patients, physicians and other legitimate health care providers.
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By NBC News' Alison Kartevold
BOLINGBROOK, Ill. – A bitter wind cut the air and rippled through blue and pink ribbons tied around the trees that line Pheasant Chase Court, the cul-de-sac where Drew Peterson lives. The ribbons are remnants of a vigil for Kathleen Savio and Stacy Peterson – two women, one dead and the other feared dead, both forever tied to Peterson.
Holiday cheer is hard to come by in this Chicago suburb. The bleak weather reflects the mood of a neighborhood weary of unwanted and unrelenting attention.
Peterson, the retired Bolingbrook police officer named a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, and questioned by authorities about the death of his third wife, Kathy, is of course the focal point.
On Monday evening, when asked about new allegations being raised against him, Peterson told the reporters assembled outside his house that as the holidays approach, the media should use its time and resources to help families in need instead of hassling his.
His sentiments are not shared by Stacy Peterson’s family and friends. Pam Bosco, a spokeswoman for her family, shot back that if Peterson really wants to help others and make the media go way, he should share what he knows about the 23-year-old.
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By Ron Mott, NBC News Correspondent
MIAMI – There’s a certain lump that swells in the throat when you stare at a casket you shouldn’t be seeing. I have experienced that now three times this year – twice with family members gone much too soon and again today with
Sean Taylor, just 24 years old.
I didn’t know Taylor, but I know how special he was by taking nothing more than a quick glance around Pharmed Arena on the campus of Florida International University Monday, where his funeral was taking place. In the 4,700 seats are people with that familiar look – shock, crippling sadness, anger, disbelief. They all know they’re not supposed to be here. But they are.
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