A Small Problem

About a year ago, Governor Perdue’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Lanier Cansler, a former lobbyist, did a strange thing: He gave an exclusive $30 million no-bid contract to a company that had only been in existence for two months – Prodigy Diabetes Care.
 
Naturally, the press, suspicious, started digging and soon found the brothers who owned Prodigy – Admani and Ramzi Abulhaj – had previously owned a corporation called VitalCare in Miami which had been sued for stealing another company’s patent. They lost the case, were threatened with jail (apparently for ignoring a judge’s order to stop selling products they shouldn’t), went bankrupt, and were sued by the bankruptcy trustee for transferring millions of dollars out of the company to hide their assets from creditors.
 
Next the Abulhaj brothers moved to North Carolina, opened Prodigy, and Secretary Cansler blessed them with an exclusive no-bid contract. So, for a year they’ve been the only company in North Carolina that can sell syringes, test strips and glucose meters to Medicaid patients.
 
Then, last week, the newspapers a problem: The Prodigy meters don’t work.
 
A doctor in Charlotte wrote Cansler’s department, bluntly saying, “Insisting that patients rely on this meter poses a danger to the children who use it. On more than one occasion, erroneous data obtained from our patients from this meter has resulted in trips to the hospital. Just today, one of my patients has suffered significant hypoglycemia requiring a trip to the hospital. Her Prodigy meter did not reflect her low blood sugar.”
 
The head of the Diabetes Association added her own warning about Prodigy’s meters, and a patient in Raleigh reported when her meter gave false readings she replaced it with another – but got the same result.
 
Firing back with both barrels Prodigy rolled out its lawyer, saying “the vast majority” of its customers are “extremely happy” and routinely express their joy at using its meters – and the only rare problems are due to user error.
 
Secretary Cansler, without bothering to independently test the meters, announced since the Prodigy meters are cheaper he’s sticking with that exclusive no-bid contract another year – so, like it or not, if you’re a diabetic Medicaid patient you’re stuck with a glucose meter that may show you’re doing fine when you’re about to go into hypoglycemic shock.
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Carter Wrenn

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A Small Problem

About a year ago, Governor Perdue’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Lanier Cansler, a former lobbyist, did a strange thing: He gave an exclusive $30 million no-bid contract to a company that had only been in existence for two months – Prodigy Diabetes Care.
 
Naturally, the press, suspicious, started digging and soon found the brothers who owned Prodigy – Admani and Ramzi Abulhaj – had previously owned a corporation called VitalCare in Miami which had been sued for stealing another company’s patent. They lost the case, were threatened with jail (apparently for ignoring a judge’s order to stop selling products they shouldn’t), went bankrupt, and were sued by the bankruptcy trustee for transferring millions of dollars out of the company to hide their assets from creditors.
 
Next the Abulhaj brothers moved to North Carolina, opened Prodigy, and Secretary Cansler blessed them with an exclusive no-bid contract. So, for a year they’ve been the only company in North Carolina that can sell syringes, test strips and glucose meters to Medicaid patients.
 
Then, last week, the newspapers a problem: The Prodigy meters don’t work.
 
A doctor in Charlotte wrote Cansler’s department, bluntly saying, “Insisting that patients rely on this meter poses a danger to the children who use it. On more than one occasion, erroneous data obtained from our patients from this meter has resulted in trips to the hospital. Just today, one of my patients has suffered significant hypoglycemia requiring a trip to the hospital. Her Prodigy meter did not reflect her low blood sugar.”
 
The head of the Diabetes Association added her own warning about Prodigy’s meters, and a patient in Raleigh reported when her meter gave false readings she replaced it with another – but got the same result.
 
Firing back with both barrels Prodigy rolled out its lawyer, saying “the vast majority” of its customers are “extremely happy” and routinely express their joy at using its meters – and the only rare problems are due to user error.
 
Secretary Cansler, without bothering to independently test the meters, announced since the Prodigy meters are cheaper he’s sticking with that exclusive no-bid contract another year – so, like it or not, if you’re a diabetic Medicaid patient you’re stuck with a glucose meter that may show you’re doing fine when you’re about to go into hypoglycemic shock.
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Carter Wrenn

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