Posted By LambChop
From The Washington Post:
Oops. Apparently the SEC took notice of an unusually high surge of trading private health insurers’ stock (like Humana) JUST before an April 1 announcement about a Medicare change worth billions of dollars to the same private insurers.
Apparently, hundreds of federal employees were given advance warning of the potentially profitable news. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) told The Washington Post that he found out that 436 employees at Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services were given the insider info about the Medicare decision two weeks before it was made public – plenty of time to make some money. Grassley believes the number of employees in the know will increase as investigations continue.
“This should sound an alarm,” Grassley said. “It should result in better controls to avoid unfair access to information that the average investor could never tap.”
Former Commissioner of Bureau of Labor Statistics Hall said employees in other parts of the government, like the Medicare office, are not subject to the same types of potential consequences as his employees at statistical agencies, who are under threat of prison for up to five years and face a fine of a quarter of a million dollars for disclosing information early.
The Justice Department letter sent to Grassley’s Senate office last month asked that Grassley staffer Rodney Whitlock provide e-mails and other information about his contacts with former staffer Mark Hayes, according to people familiar with the letter. Hayes had worked on health-care issues with Whitlock.After Hayes left Grassley’s office, he joined the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, where he was a lobbyist for Humana and had a contract to provide political intelligence to a Washington brokerage. Hayes sent an e-mail to an analyst at that brokerage, Height Securities, signaling the likelihood of the Medicare funding plan before the Obama administration made it public. The analyst then alerted brokerage clients, and some health insurance companies’ stocks soared. Hayes, his law firm and the analyst have since been subpoenaed by federal investigators, according to people familiar with the probe.
When you lease government property to vermin, you shouldn't be surprised when you find rat turds in the carpet.
Posted by: German Shepherd | 06/10/2013 at 06:15 PM