Industry trade groups lobbied hard to support the effort. The Justice Department's former top defense-fraud prosecutor, Richard Sauber, is now encouraging hospital chains to hammer out an industrywide ethics program. Toward that end, health-care companies must overcome big obstacles to change. The Justice Department is balking at setting up another formal voluntary-compliance program. And Congress has raised the ante for a guilty plea, forcing companies to fight more ferociously to avoid conviction.
Companies are willing to do anything, even see their executive go to jail, to avoid conviction.
Military contractors never faced such severe punishment. But the stiffer penalties called for in the new Medicare rules mean hospitals might have a rough time even if they voluntarily confess their sins. The new issue features a new introduction and five new chapters by the the author. Eli Evan's classic portrait of Jews in the South takes readers inside the nexus between Southern and Jewish histories, from the earliest immigrants to the present day. Fully updated by the author, The Provincials brilliantly evokes the rhythms and heartbeat of Southern Jewish life, written with the Southerner's sense of home and the Jewish longing for a homeland.