Overcharging

A Kuwait-based company that is the principal food supplier to the U.S. military in Iraq has been indicted on charges that it defrauded the U.S. government in a series of alleged schemes that, by one account, have cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion. The six-count criminal indictment was unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta against the company, Public Warehousing Co., or PWC, which in 2006 changed its name to Agility. Among other things, the complaint accuses the company of filing false invoices, failing to pass discounts along to the federal government, and asking vendors to decrease the amount of products in their packages "for no reason other than to charge the United States more for the same amount of product."

A Boston bank cheated California's two largest employee pension funds of nearly $57 million by inflating fees it charged for foreign currency trades, according to a suit filed Tuesday by the state attorney general's office. The pension funds, including the giant California Public Employees' Retirement System, didn't even know they were being fleeced by State Street Corp., the state's lawyers said. The scheme was uncovered by whistle-blowers with firsthand knowledge of how State Street operated, they said.

A Small Claims Court judge ruled Thursday that healthcare giant Anthem Blue Cross of California overcharged a Culver City man more than $5,700 for safety-net medical insurance, and he ordered the company to pay him back with interest. "This is one for the people," said plaintiff Herbert "Les" Greenberg. The judge "could not understand what Blue Cross did not understand about the law, which is clear on its face." The award might be small change for Anthem, whose corporate parent, WellPoint Inc., netted $2.5 billion last year.

Winding up in the emergency room is bad enough. But the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that patients no longer have to worry about getting billed for emergency treatment charges that their HMOs fail to pay. Health maintenance organizations and patient advocates hailed the decision as an important protection against gouging by hospitals and physicians. But doctors said it would encourage greedy HMOs to underpay them and that that could put emergency rooms in jeopardy.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will refund $160 million that it overcharged other government agencies for more than a decade, the state attorney general's office announced Monday.

McKesson Corp. won dismissal of a proposed class-action lawsuit over claims it inflated wholesale prices of prescription medicines in violation of antitrust laws. The New England Carpenters Health Benefits Fund failed to demonstrate the anticompetitive effects resulting from McKesson's alleged conduct, U.S. District Judge Patti Saris said in Boston.

Whenever I hear talk about universal healthcare in the U.S., I shudder. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that access to healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. What I fear is universal access to a system that, in my opinion, is fundamentally flawed. We spend more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world. A lot more. Especially considering that nearly one-sixth of the population has no health insurance. And the costs keep rising.

The California company headed by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi overcharged the agency some $6 million under a long-term contract to conduct physical evaluations on veterans applying for disability benefits, an audit has found. The report, released Thursday, also questioned a proposal by the Department of Veterans Affairs to amend the contract with the company -- QTC Management Inc., based in Diamond Bar -- to charge higher rates than currently authorized.

McKesson Corp., the biggest U.S. drug distributor, must face a class-action lawsuit over claims that it wrongfully inflated the wholesale price of prescription medicines, causing millions of consumers to pay too much. U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston certified the class action Wednesday, court records show. The class was certified under federal racketeering statutes, meaning that whatever damages may eventually be awarded would be tripled, lawyers said. San Francisco-based McKesson didn't immediately comment.