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A lobbyist for the California Coalition on Workers' Compensation, Jason Schmelzer, was quoted in last Tuesday's LA Times article as stating, "This is one we're getting out ahead of early."

He was referring to the project of getting legislation pushed through the California legislature to stop abuses by medical providers who overly and unnecessarily prescribe compounded medications to workers' compensation patients and then charge exorbitant fees for them. 

My initial and even later mature reaction to Schmelzer's quote is that the greater coalition in California of the business, labor, and insurance sectors has been slow to react.  The abuses over prescribing compounded medications to workers' compensation patients have been going on way too long, and I can't fathom how Schmelzer thinks he and the California Coalition on Workers' Compensation are getting out ahead of this issue early.  Early?  I guess I have a different sense of time and events. 

I see here a young woman murdered, Juliana Redding, in 2008, allegedly by the partner and assistant of Munir Uwaydah, M.D., Kelly Soo Park.  Uwaydah has been notorious for unnecessarily prescribing compounded drugs to workers' compensation patients and then charging exorbitant prices for them.  He tried to go into business with Juliana Redding's father, Greg Redding, a licensed pharmacist.  Does it take a genius to imagine that Uwaydah wanted Greg Redding to make compounded drugs?   Uwaydah needed a new pharmacist, because he had ripped off his previous pharmacies as his trail of lawsuits with pharmacies reveal, and no other pharmacy who knew of him wanted to do business with him. Just check the civil court records. So, when Greg Redding backed out of the deal, his daughter Juliana was found dead in her Santa Monica apartment some days later. 

So, let's put the pieces together here without stepping on the toes of law enforcement and the Los Angeles District Attorney's office and their on-going investigation.  A young woman's death has some connection to Uwaydah's associate (Kelly Soo Park's DNA was found on Juliana Redding's body) and to Uwaydah's and Kelly Soo Park's mutual greed in desiring to dispense compounded drugs to workers' compensation patients and rip off the workers' compensation insurance and self-insured industry. 

So, as I stated in my previous article of this series, greed is a universally known motive for murder, and any loop hole which is left open for exploitation by the greedy, especially ones associated with a murder, cannot be plugged up too soon.  Juliana Redding will have been dead for 3 years this coming March 15th just two and a half months away.   Time is now beyond being of the essence.

Now, let's look back to 2006, and the subsequent law suit Munir Uwaydah, M.D. and Frontline Medical filed against State Compensation Insurance Fund.  In this same LA Times article from last Tuesday, December 28th, by Marc Lifsher, Uwaydah's name is not even mentioned.  Yes, there are other medical provider players in on the game of compounded drugs now, but certainly Uwaydah was the pilot fish. Lifsher writes that the critics of the use of compounded drugs point to a recent sharp rise in the bills submitted to State Compensation Insurance Fund.   However, it is not only to State Comp that these bills have been submitted.  Berkshire Hathaway began withholding millions of dollars in medical liens of Uwaydah's as far back as 2006, around the same time when State Compensation began an investigation of Munir Uwaydah, M.D. and his medical practice, Frontline Medical, of which he is the principal owner. 

Zenith Insurance Company has also held back from paying Uwaydah/Frontline's medical liens, including compounded drug pharmaceutical billings, as have many others.  So, State Comp is certainly not alone in receiving very high compounded drug prescription billings. 

The LA Times article stated that State Comp received billings for compounded drugs of $28 million last year, which I interpret as in 2009, which was a very sharp rise from the year before and was 24% of their total prescription billings. The number from the previous year, 2008, was described as so low that State Fund didn't even bother to track it. 

This statement that they didn't even bother to track it seems peculiar to me, as I know from the court documents from the Uwaydah/Frontline vs. State Comp case, that State Comp in early 2006 was holding onto and refusing to pay approximately two million dollars in compounded medication prescription billings from Uwaydah's Frontline Medical.  Two million dollars from one provider does not seem to me like a number so low that State Comp wouldn't bother to track it.  And this number came earlier than 2008; it came out of early 2006!

In late 2007 or early 2008, Munir Uwaydah, M.D. heard from an ex-employee of his named Shannon Moore that a private investigator named Greg Frost of Martin Frost Investigations had approached her on behalf of State Comp.  Reportedly Martin Frost Investigations had received an assignment to do a background investigation on Frontline Medical Associates and Munir Uwaydah, M.D. thru State Comp attorney, Bruce Roth.

So, like he had done to so many others who had opposed him, Uwaydah soon initiated a civil proceeding against State Comp and attorney Bruce Roth, alleging they had conspired to deprive him of several million dollars in medical liens.  

In a Court of Appeals document from the State of California, the Second District, Division Seven, dated May 18th 2010, from this case of Uwaydah/Frontline as the plaintiffs and Bruce Roth/State Comp as the defendants, the document reads in one short paragraph out of more than a dozen paragraphs, that Uwaydah's allegations are, (and I quote from the document, verbatim): Roth's ulterior motive was to obtain collateral advantage over Uwaydah by means of extortion.  In order to gain leverage in settlement negotiations, Roth sought to defame Uwaydah.  Roth acted from an improper, evil, malicious motive in that he used the legal process to defame Uwaydah, entitling him to punitive damages.

This is Uwaydah's pattern and practice with all his selected opponents who frustrate him in his thefts.  In seeking to defraud an insurance carrier, he cites defamation and malicious motive.  To stop other physicians from opposing him, he sues as well citing defamation and malicious motive, as he attempted to do in the County of Santa Clara Superior Court case #CV795916 against two physicians, James Zuckerman, M.D. and Eugene Carragee, M.D.

His complaint against me was for libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress. I quote from the document which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on July 22nd 2010 but was never served upon me:  As a proximate result of the above described publication by defendant, plaintiff has suffered loss of reputation, shame, mortification and hurt feelings, all to plaintiff's general damage. The above described articles was (should be were) published by defendant with knowledge of its falsity, and with a reckless disregard of whether it was true, and thus, plaintiff is entitled to an award of punitive damages. 

Before I was ever advised that I had been sued by Uwaydah (I was advised by Gregg Griggs, journalist and editor of workcompcentral.com, that he received a copy of the Los Angeles Superior Court filing through his subscription) I sent a letter to Uwaydah's attorney, Benjamin Fenton, answering his letter demand that I take down all of my articles about Uwaydah and his frauds. 

I wrote to Fenton:  In your July 15th correspondence, you claim that every fact contained in the article series is false and defamatory and contains numerous ad hominem attacks on Dr. Uwaydah. This is another outlandish accusation, which is egregiously and ridiculously false, for every FACT we have reported has been backed up by police reports and court documents which have been copied, read, and studied carefully by myself and my freelance writer, Larry Kennedy.

Your client, Munir Uwaydah, M.D., is a very dangerous man.  Not only is he guilty of egregious fraud against the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, but he is also a consummate narcissist who preys upon, exploits, seduces, and terrifies very young women. 

Such a personality as Uwaydah's is extremely dangerous, as he is a child with an enormous amount of power and wealth.  Give a child unlimited wealth and power, and you have a very dangerous creature.  You get an Idi Amin.  With all this hurt feelings rhetoric in his law suits, he acts like a crying child being disciplined and told how to behave by adults.  He orders his immature legal thugs to fight the big bad grown-ups by filing law suits against them.  These lawyers should be embarrassed, and should find such legal actions undignified. 

But what is more powerful than wealth?  Truth.  Knowledge.  Freedom.  And the pen, which is as the old adage says, mightier than the sword. 

The fact that the coalitions have the knowledge that there is abuse in the workers compensation system over these compounded drugs fueled by doctors like Uwaydah prompts me to tell the coalitions to move even more swiftly with pressure on the legislature and not to let up. 

The prosecutors and the law enforcement officials handling the Kelly Soo Park accused murderer case need to move quickly and push hard for a speedy trial, so that they can sooner rather than later release their gag orders and allow journalists to learn more about the truth and allow investigators to speak openly to the Press. 

With all due respect to Jason Schmelzer, the lobbyist who said, "This is one we're getting out ahead of early," I personally don't feel we've gotten out on this one in any way early enough.  That's not possible when there's a murder trial about to start, and one that has a connection with compounded drugs for excessive profit.

Readers may write to writer Lonce LaMon at lonce@adjustercom.com.

Copyright © 2010 by www.adjustercom.com, Lonce LaMon