Whistleblowers Join With Sen. Grassley
On the eve of the largest expansion of Medicare in history, eight whistleblowers that helped recover over $3 billion for the American people joined with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) to call for increased efforts to combat heath care fraud.

Joining Senator Grassley and the whistleblowers were Mark McClelland, the new Administrator for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, and Dara Corrigan, the new Acting Inspector General of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund presented Senator Grassley with a turn-of-the-century brass steam whistle as an award for leading the charge to combat fraud and helping save taxpayers billions of dollars through fraud prevention.

Senator Grassley also presented "gold whistle" awards to the whistleblowers. Among the honorees:

• Dr. Joe Gerstein (pictured, above, with Sen. Grassley), who was one of the principle whistleblowers in the TAP Pharmaceuticals case;
  
  
• James Alderson, who was the principle whistleblower in the Quorum Health Care case and one of the key whistleblowers in the Columbia-HCA case;
  
  
• Al Campbell who blew the whistle on Lockheed Martin's in the LANTIRN case,
  
  
• Robert Merena who was the principle whistleblower in the SmithKline Beecham Clinical Labs case;
  
  
• Bret Roby, who blew the whistle on Boeing's unsafe Chinook Helicopters,
  
  
• John W. Schilling who was one of the key whistleblower in the Columbia-HCA case, and;
  
  
• Luis Cobo and Mark Jones, two of the four Ven-A-Care whistleblowers in the Fresenius Health Care case, the first Bayer case, the Dey Phamaceuticals case, and the recent Schering-Plough case in Texas.

The event was featured on the "Your Money" section of ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings (4/23/04)

>> To read short bios on the whistleblowers (PDF)