Topic: WorldNetDaily
We don't know who keeps track of such things, but Dr. Lee Hieb seems to have approached some kind of record for having the most falsehoods and deceptions in a single column.
Hieb begins her Oct. 7 WorldNetDaily column:
So, Warren Buffet woke up and called foul to Obamacare. John Boehner finally found a spine and tried to call a halt to Obamacare. But does it matter? Isn’t it all too little, too late?
In fact, Buffett (whose name Hieb misspells throughout her column) did not say such a thing -- the remarks were taken out of context and originally spoken three years ago. Buffett himself said, “It’s 100 percent wrong … totally false.”
Hieb then wrote:
I presume that the “Wizard of Omaha,” whose house I pass frequently on my way to and from shopping, is not stupid financially. He presumably gets the idea that you cannot spend more than you make, nor can you pay people to be idle.
First, Buffett is called the "Oracle of Omaha." Second, it seems highly doubtful that Hieb really does "frequently" pass by Buffett's house.
According to Hieb's LinkedIn profile, she is a surgeon at Stewart Memorial Community Hospital in Lake City, Iowa, which is, according to Google Maps' preferred route, 132 miles from Omaha. One online bio of Hieb states that "She currently divides her time between an Orthopaedic practice in Iowa, chicken raising and caring for her husband and two sons," which further suggests she has little time to go out of her way to drive by Buffett's Omaha home.
She appears to live in Logan, Iowa, which is closer to Obama but still nearly 40 miles away. She seems to be kept busy there fighting city notices to remove chickens from her property. With so much traveling between Logan and Lake City, Obama would be far out of her way to visit with the frequency she claims, let alone to go as far into the city as one must to drive past Buffett's house.
Hieb then rants:
But until we hold Congress to the Constitution, it doesn’t matter what law they pass anywhere about anything. You can go to jail for all sorts of violations of their little bureaucrat regulations, which is how Dr. Natale ended in Federal Prison for something he wrote in an operative note and how an ophthalmologist in San Diego ended in federal prison for choosing the wrong CPT codes and how a businessman ended in prison for importing the wrong subspecies of crustacean.
Dr. John Natale was imprisoned for something a little more serious than "something he wrote in an operative note." Most people would call it Medicare fraud. According to the Chicago Tribune, Natale was convicted on two counts of making false statements, and "the trial jury found that for at least two patients in 2004, Natale prepared false post-operation reports containing details about aneurysm repairs that he never performed, and falsely describing the surgeries he did perform as being more complex and elaborate than they actually were." The judge also found that Natale obstructed justice while testifying in his own behalf at trial.
Hieb doesn't give enough info on "ophthalmologist in San Diego ended in federal prison for choosing the wrong CPT codes," but it appears she's referring to Jeffrey Rutgard, whose case the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- where Hieb is past president -- has championed. Rutgard was convicted in 1992 of 132 counts of fraud (which presumably involved a lot more than putting down the wrong billing codes), for which he was sentenced to 11 years in prison and ordered to pay $16 million in restitution. On appeal, some of the charges were dropped and that sentence vacated; he was resentenced to time served in prison.
To what end is Hieb directing all of these falsehoods and misrepresentations? Bashing Obamacare, of course. Hieb does graciously concede that Obamacare did not start "the collapse of America," but asserts that it "will be the straw on the camel’s back to finish."
