
Health Giant Sutter Destroys Evidence in Crucial Antitrust Case Over High Prices - blacktulip
https://californiahealthline.org/news/health-giant-sutter-destroys-evidence-in-high-profile-antitrust-case-over-high-prices/
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blunte
Penalties for corporate misbehavior are absurdly small, particularly in cases
of obvious malice or fraud.

Until executives and shareholders feel real pain, companies can simply make
their decisions based on cost outcomes. In most cases, the financial incentive
to cheat and flaunt the law is just too great compared to the risk of penalty.

Throw some execs in jail, starting with the CEO. If CEOs are so valuable that
they can be paid 100x median employee wage, then they should have some real
responsibility. And penalize the stock in some way so the investors feel the
pain. Sure, it's not their fault necessarily; but if you make the investors
angry enough, they will demand proper behavior from the companies they invest
in.

~~~
empath75
Along with more obvious reasons like corruption, one reason prosecutors don’t
like to go after shareholders or shut down the company is that there are a lot
of people who work for these companies who aren’t responsible for bad acts,
who have families to support and putting lots of people out of work for
something out of their control is political suicide.

~~~
ablekh
This makes no sense, because CEOs are not irreplaceable (and, thus, should not
be immune). Just replace a bad CEO with a good one and all "innocent" workers
will not only not suffer, but will be in a better shape due to expected
overall improvement of the company's culture and performance.

~~~
wjnc
The 'just replace' kind of makes no sense. Replacing senior staff has all
kinds of ripple effects throughout a corporation. I would propose that hardly
any illegal or immoral act of big corp starts with the CEO. It's a cabal
usually. Just cutting the head of won't work. I would like to read about
clearly immoral companies coming clean, tips? In fear many only clear their
act up in nominem.

~~~
ablekh
I stand by my opinion, but you have to read it not literally. Firstly and
obviously, the phrase "just replace" is somewhat a simplification, even though
I believe that, in any decent organization, it should not have any ripple
effects at all. Secondly, assuming you attempt to read between lines, my
points do not specifically target CEOs per se, but upper management, who
almost always is the mastermind, initiator, orchestrator and beneficiary of
illegal and/or immoral acts in corporations ("cabal" in your parlance).

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ak217
I don't know much about this particular case, but I know that Sutter Health is
a reckless, ruthless, predatory company that is a not-for-profit in name only,
and uses all the same tactics that PE companies use to take over and leverage
hospitals to expand its network. They don't care about their patients, as
evidenced by their dispute with Blue Shield a few years ago (previous story:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2016/04/07/4732535...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2016/04/07/473253558/big-california-firms-take-on-health-care-giant-
over-cost-of-care)) where many thousands of users were left with no insurance
coverage and kicked out of their groups while Sutter engaged in brinkmanship
while negotiating with Blue Shield.

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mythrwy
I keep asking in the US when we are going to have had enough of this entire
health-care fiasco.

Nobody is happy with it, the people who are victimized by companies like
Sutter aren't happy and I guess most folks that work at the Sutters of the
country aren't happy either. They are just going through the motions in quite
desperation because house payments but it sucks and what they are doing sucks
and they know it.

It's kind of like the Soviet Union right before the fall. People knew there
were deep structural problems, the plebs, the party officials, they had to
have known. But for the time being they just kept going through the motions
until one day the the farce just got too onerous to pretend anymore.

That day is about here I think. Or rather hope. The entire setup between
government, insurance and corps like Sutter is very truly nuts and isn't
serving the needs it was designed for. I don't think that's a fringe belief
either but a growing understanding.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Also, healthcare isn't the only industry with that type of problem.

That makes the issue more resonant, because the deep corruption of the legal
system and routine criminality of corporations cuts across pretty much every
facet of life.

Intentional criminality by corporations should be treated _exactly_ like
intentional criminality by gangs, with the leaders rounded up and served
sentences according to the scale they operated on. Anything in excess of a
billion dollars of criminal activity should be a life sentence.

I somehow think compliance would be much better if executives were held
responsible for it. But... That's how corruption works -- they're not.

~~~
narrator
Meanwhile, in China: [https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/09/chinese-billionaire-
executed...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/09/chinese-billionaire-executed-for-
mafia-style-gang.html)

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averagewall
Sutter says "part of a routine destruction of old paper records"

If that's true, they can be required to show evidence of the rest of this
routine and how it was possible for the mistake to happen. Apparently they
havn't destroyed documents for at least 17 years so it doesn't sound very
routine at all.

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bsder
Sigh. Why not?

Unless a judge either throws a CEO in jail or applies a "death penalty" to a
company, there is nothing to lose.

~~~
mikestew
_Sigh. Why not?_

Because when we catch you, even if it were an “unfortunate mistake”, your
company gets an automatic “unfortunate” finding for the plaintiff. Of course
it doesn’t currently work that way. OTOH, the judge will probably be none too
pleased. Perhaps not resulting in an automatic finding for the plaintiff, but
I’d imagine defense has an uphill climb from there.

~~~
Gibbon1
Why not?

Few years ago found an article claiming that the threat of prison keeps middle
class people in line. Actual prison is needed for poor people. However wealthy
people just the loss of reputation and law suits are enough to keep them in
line.

It was written of a chief appellate court justice.

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trophycase
So the expected value of obstruction of justice is better than the penalty for
the crime. Oh boy...

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brudgers
Twenty years ago,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Corporation_of_Americ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Corporation_of_America#Fraud_investigations)

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timthelion
I really don't understand what is not legal with charging what you can for
drugs. I'm not a fan of capitalism, but what is not legal or even considered
immoral about charging what the market will bare?

~~~
pfooti
the market will bear a surprising amount of people dying because they are too
poor to live, and make more profit that way than selling the drugs at low
prices to poor people. I'm not a professor of ethics or anything, but I feel
like that's probably not super moral. Speaking broadly, I'm not sure we can
consider the market to be a moral entity, or at least not while we externalize
the costs of im- and amoral behavior.

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twunde
The actual issue of the case is that healthcare providers have been
consolidating for a number of years, so much so that in the northeast is very
rare to find independent providers. Small doctor practices are now usually
part of a larger provider instead of being independent. The small practice
gets to hand of administration of billing issues and gets much better rates
from insurers. Hospitals get more referrals. In some areas, you end up with 1
or 2 providers so insurance companies have no choice but to pay high prices
and pass those on to consumers.

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cdubzzz
> The trial is scheduled for June 2019.

The US justice system is baffling.

~~~
refurb
This sounds like a complex case. Doesn't seem odd that the plaintiff and
defendants need time to prepare.

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dannyw
Almost two years to prepare?

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tryingagainbro
15 million pieces of documents and 1400 witnesses to talk to. I made those
numbers up but on HCA case apparently the Govt had 13,000 boxes of
documents...500 FBI agents participated and HCA spent $300 mil in their
defense
[https://books.google.com/books?id=5SwZ0j9lf40C&pg=PA235&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=5SwZ0j9lf40C&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=most+complex+case+ever+million+documents&source=bl&ots=MMMVEg4Tm_&sig=ltNxIsc5tG9qhFCAyn7qn-7GwOc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF9r3b0sfXAhVFSRoKHT2ICdMQ6AEIPDAE#v=onepage&q=most%20complex%20case%20ever%20million%20documents&f=false)

~~~
maxerickson
That right there is an argument for laws resembling antitrust laws, but simply
aimed at corporate power, rather than excessive market power.

The efficiencies gained by mega corporations aren't that big, we shouldn't let
them use size complexity to obscure malfeasance.

