Two more members of the Pilot Flying J sales staff have pleaded guilty to defrauding customers at the truck-stop chain owned by the family of Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
The nation’s largest diesel retailer has reached a speedy settlement with some customers cheated out of rebate money.
Experts say that’s all the better for Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and his brother, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, whose family owns the truck stop chain.
Jimmy Haslam runs Pilot Flying J, which was founded by his father. Gov. Bill Haslam left the company to run for Knoxville mayor in 2003 and still has an ownership stake.
Their prominent positions give them incentive to put the scandal behind them as quickly as possible: Bill Haslam has a looming re-election campaign, and Jimmy Haslam could face sanctions from the NFL if it isn’t dealt with.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
By Associated Press A truck stop company owned by the family of Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam says it is under criminal investigation after an FBI raid.
From: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9179080/cleveland-browns-owner-jimmy-haslam-company-probed-feds
A truck stop company owned by the family of Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam says it is under criminal investigation after an FBI raid.
Jimmy Haslam, the CEO of Pilot Flying J, said Tuesday in Knoxville that the investigation appears to involve what he called a small number of trucking customers who were owed rebates that weren’t paid.
Jimmy Haslam, who owns the Cleveland Browns, says the company disputes that.
Bill Killian, the U.S. Attorney in Knoxville, told The Associated Press that four search warrants have been served on Pilot. He said the reasons for the warrants are sealed.
FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents locked down the Pilot Flying J headquarters Monday and ordered employees out of the building as they conducted their search.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/r4QAkWjIecs/
By Brandy Betz, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Heading into this holiday weekend, health-care stocks continue to lead the S&P 500 in 2013. But behind the share-price gains is an industry undergoing dramatic changes. While fellow fool Sean Williams recaps the week’s biotech and pharmaceutical news, here’s a look at the top stories from the other parts of the health-care industry.
Two stories this week displayed the uncertainty that surrounds some forthcoming Obamacare changes. In addition, a Consumer Reports investigation showed which drugstores have the lowest margins on generic drugs.
The Volunteer State and Medicaid
Arkansas’ tentative permission to use federal Medicaid expansion money to purchase private insurance led many other states to pursue that route. But the matter’s a bit more complicated, and Sarah Kliff reports at WonkBlog that Tennessee has run into opposition from the Department of Health and Human Services.
The problem wasn’t the state’s desire to use the money for private insurance, but that Gov. Bill Haslam also proposed that the newly eligible Medicaid members should have similar co-pays to others in the health-insurance exchanges. And that could mean the government might spend far more than it would on a traditional Medicaid plan. The HHS remains open to negotiations, but Gov. Haslam seems firm in his proposal.
Tennessee’s Medicaid program includes Magellan as its pharmacy benefits manager and counts UnitedHealth and WellPoint as its major insurance backers. So investors for those companies should keep an eye on this story.
Medicare cuts
Turning to the Medicare side of the Affordable Care Act, health plans rose this week on the suggestion that Medicare Advantage rates might see lower cuts than previously announced. Those rates were based on the assumption that Congress will go through with a 25% physician pay cut for next year, which would require the higher insurance rates for balance. But Congress hasn’t implemented the pay cut in more than a decade, so the rate cuts haven’t been necessary. We’ll find out for sure with the final rate announcement on Monday. Humana is overly dependent on Medicare, and shares were up nearly 3% on Wednesday following the news.
Finding cheap drugs
Consumer Reports was out with a study showing which drugstores have the best prices on generic medications. Costco had the lowest prices, while CVS Caremark had the highest. The publication theorizes that the price difference comes from how much the pharmacy segment means to the overall business. After all, a big-box store like Costco can afford narrower margins on its generics because there’s more general store than pharmacy, while CVS is more dependent on its pharmacy to drive the bottom line.
The story of our generation?
What macro trend was Warren Buffett referring to when he said “this is the tapeworm that’s eating at American competitiveness”? Find out in our free report: “What’s Really Eating at America’s Competitiveness.” You’ll also discover an idea to profit as companies work to eradicate this efficiency-sucking tapeworm. Just …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
The University of Tennessee wants to allow hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas on a state-owned tract of rolling woodland, raising the hackles of environmentalists who question its stated goal of raising funds to research the environmental impact of such drilling.
With debate over “fracking” continuing, the unique proposal is being considered when many universities say they don’t have enough money to properly study the environmental implications of an increasingly popular and lucrative method for energy companies to remove gas or oil from rock formations by forcing liquids underground at high pressure.
“We have not been able to find any instances of a university drilling on their land and funding their research with revenues from the drilling activities,” said Gwen Parker, a Nashville-based staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. Her group is taking a lead in trying to block the move, saying the university’s proposal raises ethical concerns.
The university is requesting permission from the state to allow an outside company to drill on about 8,000 acres of mature woodlands it maintains as an outdoor laboratory in the Cumberland Plateau — all while performing research on the effects on water quality, air quality and ground impacts.
University officials argue that because the property is state-owned, they can maintain control over the drilling project, and provide independent scientific results in an area of the industry where many environmental questions remain.
On Friday, the university will present its proposal on the project to a subcommittee of State Building Commission, which will decide whether to allow the university to seek bids from companies. Environmental groups are planning a rally and news conference before the 2 p.m. session.
Parker called the proposal a “fundamental conflict of interest.” She argued that the university risks its credibility by funding research with the very proceeds from such drilling. Other environmental groups have joined in the opposition, although Gov. Bill Haslam is supportive.
Environmentalists also argue that preservation of the particular forest tract in question is critical because it is one of the few mature forests still intact in the state’s Cumberland Mountains region.
Without an appraisal, it was unclear how much revenues such drilling could yield though some said it could potentially be lucrative in the range of millions of dollars annually.
Shale formations undergird a wide swath of Appalachia, crossing several states. Hydraulic fracturing has touched off a boom of sorts, making enormous reserves of natural gas accessible where previous methods could not. Natural gas is extracted using large volumes of water, plus sand and chemicals, injected deep underground to break rock apart, freeing the gas. But environmentalists say the fluids could pollute water sources and methane leaks could cause air pollution.
“There are questions surrounding natural gas extraction and we have the facilities, and we have the faculty, so have obligation to investigate in an unbiased, scientific way to provide those answers,” said Dr. Bill Brown, dean for research and director of the University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station.
Other universities that have studied fracking have faced criticism about their scientific findings after discovering …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
The commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services resigned Tuesday amid scrutiny of how her agency was handling cases of children who died after investigations of abuse and neglect.
Gov. Bill Haslam announced Kate O’Day’s resignation in a news release and wasn’t immediately available to comment.
“She was concerned that she had become more of a focus than the children the department serves,” Haslam said in the release.
The Republican governor last week defended O’Day’s leadership, even after the agency told a federal judge it couldn’t say with any certainty how many children died while in its custody.
DCS had been sued by The Tennessean, The Associated Press and 10 other news organizations to obtain case records of 151 children who died between January 2009 and July 2012 and had been the subject of state investigations of abuse or neglect.
Chancellor Carol McCoy ruled last month that DCS, which had claimed it was keeping the records closed to protect the children’s privacy, had to release hundreds of pages from four cases to the news organizations after identifying information was redacted. A decision on whether more records were to be released is pending.
DCS has been under federal court oversight for more than a decade over problems in Tennessee’s foster care system.
Less than two weeks ago DCS told a federal judge that it couldn’t accurately count how many children have died in its custody, saying its tracking system had missed nine deaths in 2011 and 2012. The revelation and increasing calls for DCS to improve its performance have threatened to derail more than 10 years of work to resolve a long-running lawsuit over the agency’s handling of foster care.
Thus far, officials have not been able to explain how DCS overlooked the nine deaths except to say that it was the result of human error.
Haslam named Commissioner Jim Henry, the head of the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, to serve as interim commissioner of DCS.
O’Day had been commissioner since January 2011, when she was appointed by Haslam. Before that she was president and chief executive officer of Child & Family Tennessee in Knoxville.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
The commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services has resigned amid scrutiny of how her agency was handling cases of children who died after investigations of abuse and neglect.
Gov. Bill Haslam announced in a news release Tuesday that Kate O’Day had decided to resign because of concerns that she had become the focus of attention rather than the children the agency is meant to serve.
The Republican governor last week defended O’Day’s leadership, even after the agency told a federal judge it couldn’t say with any certainty how many children died while in its custody.
DCS had been sued by The Tennessean, The Associated Press and 10 other news organizations to obtain case records of 150 children who died after the state launched abuse or neglect investigations.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News