Posted on: Friday, September 27, 2002

Island Voices
Medicaid probe charges baseless

Earl Anzai is the state attorney general.

Bob Rees continues his vendetta with baseless charges that a supervising deputy attorney general of our Medicaid Investigation Division was removed from his position because of "his investigation into the state's failure to comply with the Felix Consent Decree" (Counterpoint, Aug. 26).

Rees concludes the supervisor was "blatantly silenced" for "doing his duty" and insinuates he was "apparently told to keep quiet." It never happened, hence, Rees' cunning use of the word "apparently."

The removal was for reasons other than silencing the supervisor. Common decency as well as legal concerns preclude any public discussion of the job transfer. Yet, common sense alone would have suggested that the Medicaid Investigation Division investigates Medicaid cases, not state compliance with federal court consent decrees.

Like most investigations, this one was not a one-man posse. Rather, there were two other deputy attorneys general as well as two investigators actively working Felix-related Medicaid fraud cases. Thus, to effectively shut down the investigation, we would have to remove all five and somehow silence the 12 other employees of the division.

Additionally, a state shutdown would have been pointless if the reason was to silence the investigation as Chief Federal District Judge David Ezra had already asked U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo to conduct his own investigation. In fact, we have had discussions with the U.S. attorney to coordinate our investigations.

If Rees were not so blinded by bias, he also would have realized how ludicrous his insinuations are given that he reported we held a press conference with the joint Senate/House investigative committee on the Felix Consent Decree to announce our first indictment as well as our pursuit of other criminal and civil cases throughout the state.

At the same press conference, we also encouraged individuals who knew of false claims and irregular billing practices to come forward with information that could be used to further the investigation. Rees even acknowledges the supervisor's participation in the press conference.

At the press conference, I also announced I had received the governor's approval to hire two additional special investigators to focus on fraud and administrative irregularities associated with the costly implementation of the Felix Consent Decree. Does that make sense if we wanted to silence the investigation?