But the agency maintains that title is better than being a person-killer, a possibility if important food and drug controls are relaxed. What's more, Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation, heavily funded by the drug industry, wants to limit the liability of the pharmaceutical companies when they rush their overpriced, unsafe drugs and medical devices to the market. The crooks range from hospital executives pushing phony costs to taxicab drivers lying about driving the elderly to a hospital. All the while, doctors are submitting false and outrageous bills to insurance companies, often for work that was never done. Because the government has been slow to investigate complex and hard to prove white-collar crime, the crooks have had a head start.
Budget cuts mean that number is being cut down even further.
With little investigation on the part of the government or the media, these scams will continue to run rampant. The only ones who aren't confused about the health care industry, it seems, are the crooks. But many of Russia's disposal sites are located near rivers, and the contaminants have leaked beyond projections and spread in one of the Cold War's most deadly legacies. The total amount of waste tossed out is 60 times greater than the radioactive release from Chernobyl. The waste may be rendered less harmful as it decays, though of course that process is a best-case scenario and may take decades.