Talk:Health Management Associates scandal

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[edit] NPOV discussion Jan 2005

I took it upon myself to perform some minor grammatical editing of this article. There are larger issues with it that I felt should be handled by the original author. These are discussed below:

The sentence "Bill Clinton was not directly linked to any of HMA's wrongdoing, partly because any and all records of the Arkansas government's involvment with HMA were taken by Clinton as personal property when he left the Governor's office" is not NPOV and should be rewritten. The sentence implies that had Clinton not been wily enough to take the records with him, he would have been linked to the scandal. While I'm sure that this is the intent of the article, this part should be rewritten to conform to NPOV standards.

It would also be a good idea to describe Justice Krever's position in better detail. What court or other authority did he work for? Was his public inquiry a result of the Canadian Commons Committee? If not, are you suggesting that the Commons Committee's actions were a factor in Mr. Foster's death?

--Rroser167 19:54, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wrote the original article and I did not mention that Clinton was not directly linked to HMA's wrongdoing. After that, I was afraid that it would be considered POV for implying Clinton was directly involved. So, I added that he was not not found to be directly involved, though he was indirectly linked by being a close associate of all who were involved and being in the Governor's seat to sign the contract with HMA to manage the prison's healthcare. After mentioning that he was not directly linked, I felt that it would be considered POV not to mention that one reason he was not considered directly linked was that the documents that described his involvement were missing. After a bit of reasearch, I found that they weren't missing, they were taken by Clinton when he left office as personal documents.

As you can see, that last paragraph was added specifically to try and avoid POV. I'm open to any changes to make it NPOV. Kainaw 14:10, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As a reader of the article, mentioning that the papers were taken by Clinton makes him seem even more guilty than just saying that they were missing. How about "Although Bill Clinton was not directly linked to HMA wrongdoing, it should be noted that records of Arkansas government involvement with HMA were taken by Clinton as personal property when he left office as Governor." I believe that this doesn't lean in one direction or the other.

After writing this, it occurred to me: Surely, at some point someone must have asked Clinton about those files, and he must have responded negatively to releasing them. Do you have anything there? It would be a tremendous addition to that paragraph.

Also, I think that you should either detail Justice Krever's position or not include him at all.

--Rroser167 18:40, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK. I linked to Justice Kreever's report (I don't why I forgot to do that before!). I expanded the first part about Justice Kreever not linking Clinton to explain that his report was not designed to link anyone to any scandal. It was a report on how to improve the blood system. If you care to read through it, you will see a whole section on recommendations for extra scanning of blood from San Fransisco because of the increased threat of AIDS in the area.

Next, I expanded the part about the missing documents. The point is not that Clinton took the documents. The point is that they are not available for anyone to read. So, you can imagine that they have all kinds of illegal activities described on them - or they may simply be full of doodles of naked women. Only Clinton knows. So, I tried to make the point that linking Clinton to HMA has been done only because he became President - otherwise, nobody would care about him. The only witness to his dealings with HMA was the guy who ran the deal and who is now dead. The papers that MAY describe Clinton's part of the deal are not available. So, there is no proof, just speculation.

Do you think that's better? Kainaw 20:27, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV discussion Mar 2005

The NPOV disclaimer was moved to the top of the article. In the previous NPOV discussion, it was clear that the end of the article was not NPOV and there were attempts to fix this issue. The problem was clear. Clinton and HMA are related, but to what degree. Now, the entire article is marked NPOV. I think this is unfair. The majority of the article is simple fact. Keeping in mind that this is an article on the scandal and not HMA itself, I see no reason to mark it all as POV simply because it brings up issues that don't make HMA look good. Because the old discussion died without complete resolve, I think that the best way to force the issue and make this article NPOV is to set a time limit. I will give it a month. If nobody can find POV to remove, the article must be NPOV and the disclaimer can be removed. Kainaw 15:31, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that if an article is going to be marked with an NPOV disclaimer, it should be at the top where it is clearly visible and where readers can see it. Putting the NPOV at the bottom seems like a half-measure. I would also be fine with marking individual sections, however this particular article has only a main body. As an initial measure it might be a good idea to break this article out into two or more sections with the disputed facts in one NPOV tagged section. Having read the article, I agree with the NPOV disclaimer and the discussion above, in that I feel that this article tries to reach too much in it's attempts to link HMA and Bill Clinton. --CVaneg 16:17, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think having it split into sections is a great idea. I'm going to work on a section on the Krever Report and a section on Bill Clinton. Then, I can remove them from the main body of the article. While the Krever report section (second to last paragraph) is not POV in my opinion, I can easily see that the Krever Report itself has POV. For instance, it claims that Canada should avoid blood donations from gay areas like San Francisco.

(Note: I deleted my initial reply about Clinton because I just rewrote the section and I have something different to say about it.)

I feel that any mention of Clinton may be taken as POV. However, he personally signed the contract with HMA. He may not have read the contract or even knew what he was signing, but it is his signature. So, it is not a stretch to mention that he, as Governor, contracted HMA.

Besides that, I have tried to point out that the 'facts' on other websites are not facts at all. The three primary ones are the Krever Report, the Governor's records, and the Foster suicide. I didn't even touch the suicide consipiracy because it is reaching to try and connect those. As for the Krever Report, I feel it is worthy of mention because it does not in any way implicate anyone. So, sites that claim the Krever Report implicated Clinton are completely wrong. Finally, the Governor's records are not available to anyone. I can't even assume they still exist. I have tried to point out that any speculation about what is in them is pure speculation. To do that, I have to state why: they were taken by Clinton as personal property. I intentionally do not say "stolen by" or "hidden by". I say "taken by" because that is the most accurate description of the action that I can think of. Kainaw 20:01, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I revised the NPOV to be NPOV-section, and attached it to the corresponding section, although after re-reading the article, I think it's pretty good. Let's leave the warning on the section for a bit and think it over, but I think we'll probably be able to take it off. --CVaneg 20:08, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV discussion Oct 2005

It has been a few months. I have taken a fresh look at this article to look for POV. In doing so, I have to keep in mind that this article is not alone. There are many web pages that claim Clinton was directly involved in the HMA scandal. If Clinton's involvement (or lack of involvement) were not mentioned in any way in this article, it would be a mistake. On the other hand, if there was no claim that Clinton was involved and this article said he wasn't involved, it would be POV to bring his name up. With that in mind, I am happy that the second half makes it clear that there are many websites that claim he is directly involved - which justifies this articles claim that there is no evidence to support the claim that he was directly involved. If I were a new reader of the article and I did not read the second half, I could find it POV that Clinton's name is used in the first half. It implies that he was involved somehow but doesn't explain how or why. In the second half, it is explained that he personally signed the state's contract with HMA. So, instead of deleting information, I will add that he signed the contract in the first half. If it still reeks of POV, we can remove mention of him all together until the second half when we get into a debate with the "Clinton is Evil" websites. Kainaw 14:35, 16 October 2005 (UTC)