Why is WellCare wooing me?

Late last week, I noted Ken Silverstein’s post, Alert: A mega-scandal in the making, and quickly glanced at it. Because it involved WellCare, a health care firm I had never heard of before, I decided to read the post later.

On Saturday, I received a brochure in the mail from WellCare Health Plans. The ten-panel brochure (click to enlarge) with cute cartoons urged to me sign up for Part D Medicare (prescription drugs) for “just $19.00.”

Hmmm, now I was curious about the WellCare "mega-scandal" and why it's now wooing me, so I went back to read Silverstein's post.

According to Silverstein, who is the Washington editor for Harper's Magazine, “There’s a new scandal unraveling that has a great cast of characters and sounds like it should be fun to watch unravel." Six bullet points of information follow.

Here’s the first:

"Yesterday, the Feds raided WellCare, a fast-growing Florida health care firm which has a Cayman Islands subsidiary and whose “independent sales agents in Georgia enrolled dead people in Medicare plans.”

And the last:

"In the aftermath of the raid, WellCare’s stock has fallen through the floor. 'Some WellCare insiders managed to escape that crash,' TheStreet.com reports. 'Director Neal Moszkowski executed the most recent transaction, selling more than $1 million worth of stock four days before the raid. Meanwhile, WellCare CEO Todd Farha has been unloading company stock for months. He executed his last big transaction, which generated more than $1 million as well, just two weeks ago.'"

The points in between are fascinating.

Silverstein concludes, “Enjoy–and spend some time on Google, because there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit still to be picked.”

(scanned image of one panel of the WellCare brochure I received)