Monday, January 30, 2012

Video- Winning Our Future | Blood Money - Mitt Romney's 1990's Medicare Scandal

By Susan Duclos

Pro-Gingrich SuperPAC, Winning Our Future, has launched MittsBloodMoney.com, showing the 7:42 minute mini-documentary called Blood Money.

Under "The Document's heading, the site explains:

Debating in Tampa, Florida in late-January, while falsely characterizing Newt Gingrich’s income from his government consulting work, Mitt Romney denied that Bain did “any work with the government like Medicaid and Medicare”. Now we learn that Bain, under Romney’s “supervision”, purchased and ran the Damon Corporation, who pled guilty to Federal conspiracy charges as a result of tens of millions of dollars in systemic Medicare fraud committed under Romney’s and Bain’s control. Damon was fined over $119-million which was, at the time, the largest criminal healthcare fine in Massachusetts history and Mr. Romney’s participation was characterized in 1996 by Corporate Crime Reporter thusly: “As manager and board member of Damon Corp, Mitt Romney sits at the center of one of the top 15 corporate crimes of the 1990’s.” Watch the substantiated mini-documentary, BLOOD MONEY: MITT ROMNEY’S MEDICARE SCANDAL, to learn the truth about Mitt Romney.


Video below:




PolitiFact takes the statement of the BloodMoney video above "While Romney was a director of the Damon Corporation, the company was defrauding Medicare of millions," and rates it "mostly true".

The ad claims that, "While Romney was a director of the Damon Corporation, the company was defrauding Medicare of millions." That's true, but Romney was never implicated personally with the fraudulent activity at the company, and it was one of many companies with which Bain was involved. It’s also difficult to assess whether Romney knew about the fraud or should have known, and what he did to stop it. So the statement is correct but leaves out context. We rate this statement Mostly True.


Wapo Fact Checker takes a look at the mini film and concludes:

The Damon case is certainly a valid subject for scrutiny of Romney’s business record. He was on the company’s board at the time criminal fraud was taking place, and his statements about his knowledge of the federal investigation have been inconsistent. But the film goes too far in suggesting that Romney was responsible for running the company — or that he sold it to avoid a federal probe.


Fact Check gives it two Pinocchios after that conclusion.

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