Whistleblower News From The Inside -- October 16, 2017

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

Whistleblower protections under threat in Wisconsin — Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on waste, fraud and abuse has recouped or prevented an estimated $150 million in misspent Medicaid and FoodShare benefits for Wisconsin taxpayers, the governor’s office says. Under Walker, Wisconsin has sharply increased the resources devoted to ferreting out misuse of taxpayers’ money. When he took office in 2011, there was one inspector devoted to finding fraud in Medicaid and food assistance programs; now there are two dozen. Fortune

California Workers’ Comp Division Suspends 3 Medical Providers for Fraud — The California Division of Workers’ Compensation has suspended three more medical providers from participating in the state’s workers’ comp system, bringing the total number of providers suspended this year to 49. The suspensions were made possible by the passage last year of Assembly Bill 1244, which requires the DWC administrative director to suspend any medical provider convicted of a crime involving fraud or abuse of the Medi-Cal or Medicare programs or the workers’ comp system, a patient, or related types of misconduct. Insurance Journal

 VA whistleblower: Agency is trying to “scare me away’ through retaliatory actions — Eight months after he received death threats and a teddy bear with a noose around its neck was placed on his desk, a whistleblower at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital says his supervisors have embarked on a campaign of retaliation against him. Redger Hennah, a U.S. Army veteran who has worked as a peer support specialist at the hospital for nearly a decade, aided an Office of the Inspector General investigation into drug dealing by VA employees, as reported by The Sun last year. Lowell Sun