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TELEPHONE TRANSCRIPTS:
Becky Hainje, US BANK Personal Banker, Kansas City "Becky Hainje....Corporate Trust Area....He was
very honest, he said really it does not look good, this is something that the bank would be willing to do and he doesn't want you to invest any more time in it with him, but he did give me a listing of the main reasons, the concerns. Relationship with the Bank... that the principals involved with the business were people unknown to the bank. As he mentioned they were National and he really had no idea, but the main reason is to know your customer " USA PATRIOT ACT " that was enacted after 911, and which we could not really give all the correct answers on the source and flow of money. So, that's what the situation was. I understand that you are coming up with a unique way to finance and get a business off of the ground. Unfortunately this seems to be a day and an age where you need thinking outside of the box. It is very difficult to get anything going, and I apologize that I wasn't able to be of more service to you. Hopefully you w! ill be able to get this going perhaps with non-financing, and I do wish you all the best, if you have any more concerns, please feel free to give me a call at 913-261-5725.
Ed Higgens US BANK, Phone Msg. "Good Morning, my name is Ed Higgins I am an Executive Vice President
of US Bank. I understand that we have some issues to talk about. I didn't get all of the facts, but I am a person who can resolve any issues that you may have. I'd be happy to talk to you about them if you would like to call me at 314-418-2636, and I will be here until about ll:30 this morning. If we miss connections, certainly can try me tomorrow. Thank You."
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "You asked me to call you, I run the Trust Operation for US Bank in the
Central United States and I guess his Secretary had spoken to someone on your staff about a problem."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply."Yes, that was me Corporate Counsel for Medical Supply Chain, we had
intended to speak to your Vice Chairman of Trust ...[ Andrew Cesere, Vice Chairman of Trusts, US Bancorp, Indianopolis ], but you might be able to solve this problem today."
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "Just by way of explanation, Andy ...[ Andrew Cesere, Vice Chairman of
Trusts, US Bancorp, Indianopolis ] is a Vice Chairman, he reaches a point in the Corporation, where he is obviously a little bit removed from day to day operations. I run all of our trust business in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado. I am an Attorney and I have been doing this for 31 years, so I am about as senior as you need to go."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply."Ok."
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "And anything that happened or fails to happen I can fix."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Ok. We have a situation where we were in the process of setting up a trust account
for our education program for our Company. And we were under the impression based on the correspondence with Brian Kabbes that it wasn't a problem, we wouldn't have a problem, and so on and so forth. So, we dictated the actual escrow, sent it to Brian for approval, he gave us approval over the phone and he didn't give us any written approval. And then we followed up with the release of the escrow on how the monies need to be dispersed, obviously following the education program. And yesterday we learned from Brian that the Bank had declined to provide us the escrow based on the Patriot Act.
But we had already sent out the escrow forms to our ten best people that we were trying to recruit, based on your
approval.
And so now, we are in a situation where if we change the escrow agreement at the last minute with our ten
candidates we know we are going to loose them.
And we're hearing this explanation, very unbusiness like explanation, the USA PATRIOT ACT, which does not
apply. "
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "The USA PATRIOT ACT just parenthetically is a pain in the but for all of us,
but I am not sure how it would apply in this situation."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "No, actually we have a 14 page financial application for each of these people
that Mr. Kabbes didn't want to bother with. And these are wire transfers from US citizens of pre-eminent in their field with their own personal bank records and things you would know from the transferring source. I can't imagine how the pretext of this stupid act is in anyway involved and I don't think Mr. Kabbes is as equipped as his entire new customer acquisition for his corporate trust department."
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "Uh, it doesn't make a lot sense to me, I mean I know Brian I have spoken to
him on the phone, I don't know that I have met him face to face, maybe I have and forgot. Well, let me explain to you what we were trying to establish with the bank. Becky Haney had also left a message this morning identifying the reasons that Brian gave her and one of them were that we are a start-up when in fact we are not a start-up, and we have been your customer since April of this year. Brian also indicated why didn't we go to our branch bank. "
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Well we did go to our branch bank and they sent us to you in St. Louis. But if you
set all of that aside you identify that we are a start-up, which we are not a start-up, we have not generated revenue in the last two and one-half years since our inception, due to the fact that we have been working on the inside of the healthcare market in establishing a not only market presence, but also a demand for the services we provide. And we are at the stage now, because many of the GPO's are under indictment by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission and we have pockets of health systems all over the country that are in desperate need of the services that we provide. Now, we have had difficulty in the financing arena as far as venture capital is concerned, because obviously the markets are messed up and obviously everyone is a little hesitant to do anything. So what we designed were we found ways and as the CEO of the Company my job is to leverage our resources to grow and expand the company, so, what we actually did was we took intellectual property, our own intellectual property, we developed a certification program, or education program for our potential representatives, and in providing that we require a $30,000 Certification fee of which we put into escrow. When we put those funds in escrow, then we ask the bank to allow us to leverage our own dollars as a line of credit so that we can establish an operating capital base over and above that, we also spoke to the bank about establishing a receivables line of credit for our hospital paper and over and above that… we need a clearing of settlement services in the first year of somewhere around $90 Million dollars. We came to the US Bank, we had previously had been working with UMB Bank in Missouri and we ran into some drag in terms of their response to our needs, because we have these people scheduled to come in the first week of December. But, we are just really perplexed as to why the difficulty in the escrow, in addition to the other services that we are requesting, we are basically collateralizing our own money. And when Brian indicated that it has to do with the USA PATRIOT ACT. The USA PATRIOT ACT has nothing to do with us and as far as source of funds as Bret indicated. We have a 14 page application that includes not only our ability to do background checks on these people, but also financial background as well as any criminal background and the application covers their employment history as well as their financial status."
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "On the surface of this it doesn't make any sense to me either. I have been
taking notes since you have been speaking. Would you let me talk to Brian and Becky and see if I can learn a little more on the background on this? But I can assure you it has been escalated as high as it needs to go to get resolved. "
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "The problem that we have, we have spent 3 months and over 300 resumes
identifying our top ten candidates and based on Brian's ok of the escrow agreement, we have sent our contract and the escrow agreement to these individuals and if we try to change this in mid stream, based on the current market conditions and corporate governance and so on and so forth, we know very well that many of these people frankly, we won't pass the smell test."
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis I understand
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "So, we feel adamant about the fact that if we can't get something worked out, then
we are going to have substantial damage due to this event. "
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "I hear you."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Ok"
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "Would you let me make a few phone calls and we will get back to you with an
answer within a few hours. I wish I could tell you more right now, but until I talk to the people involved I am not going to be able to, but this is getting attention at the highest levels."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Ok"
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "So, should I call you back Mr. Lipari, Brad, or Lipari, Sam Lipari, you can
contact me or Bret, but we will be here.
Ed Higgens US BANK, St. Louis "Let me get to work on it, we will get back to you as soon as we can."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Thank you Ed. Yes, Goodbye."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Yea Brian, this is Bret Landrith, returning your call."
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis"Hey Lars Anderson wants to be on this call too, he is our
new business development guy. Do you mind if I get him on the line."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "No problem."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Hey Bret, Lars Anderson, hey Bret. "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Nice to speak to you"
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis "I report to Susan Pane and Lars is our new business
development person."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Now you had called Andy ...[ Andrew Cesere, Vice
Chairman of Trusts, US Bancorp, Indianopolis ]...... yesterday."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Yes I didn't realize when I last spoke to Brian that we had already sent out the
escrow agreements that he approved, of course."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Who approved?"
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Brian Kabbes, he works there in your office. Of course it is sort of inherent in a
escrow customer that somebody is seeking a escrow account because there is not a sufficient establishment of trust yet between the parties. And realizing that we are going to have to change the escrow account contracts with our ten best candidates that we've chosen who will produce the most revenue for our business in it's first year in market. That became a substantial issue for us and I didn't realize that when I last spoke to Mr. Kabbes."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Yeah, we were wondering how obviously calling Andy....
...[ Andrew Cesere, Vice Chairman of Trusts, US Bancorp, Indianopolis ] You were not happy with our decision not to go forward on the transaction to get a hold of management at the bank that runs our overall unit."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Mr. Kabbes was very helpful, he suggested that we go to some local bank,
some big bank hasn't bought up like you all and taken and run off the staff that knew anything. But he was also not clear on why we had sought a trust account at US Bank, because he didn't see why we didn't go to our own bank, of course you are our bank and have been since about April. The first corporate account we ever opened was with you all."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Sure, I said that when I said that your local bank. I didn't
know it was with US Bank"
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "…who has really accelerated through a level of customer service just recently in
the former First Star Bank, you guys took over and occupied. And now they actually connect us with the people that can provide the services they say they have. And that is how come our local bank forwarded us to your Trust Department."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Got yea...Well there is no doubt nobody questions about
whether you have an account or whether. You know we can't handle this type of transaction generally. The question centers around when did we commit to this transaction specifically and Brian and I have been talking and we don't know at any point where we specifically said we are on board. We were trying to evaluate the transaction therefore looking at some of the specifics of the document and what our duties were."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "I don't think we need to go into minutia over that right now I think the
chronology will come with the demand letter. But we understood you knew the purpose and why we kept contacting you getting the second change approved. By the time you made the negative decision you also had our business plan and that is pretty serious."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "We have not divulged your Business Plan; there is no
confidentiality issue here. Where did we ever accept the transaction, we never provided you pricing. We never provided you a bid and we never certainly ever signed off on the escrow agreement."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "We had pricing and this oral, and this is Missouri, and this is a business contract
in your regular line of business and we relied and depended on your excerption that it was ok and we sent it our to our best people."
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis "Hey tell you what Brad, you can talk with Sam, you can
get him on the phone if you want. Because when I went over numbers with Sam, I said by no means is this a done deal. I need to run it past some people, I told him that twice, so I discussed numbers with him, but I said to him twice. We came to what works for you. "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Sam is in the room now."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Well Brian, I also had conversations with Becky Hainje, and Becky had indicated
as well that your conversation with her according to the recording that I have of the conversation is that you guys, you or her or combination thereof, had no problem with this and it should be a 'slam-dunk,' to quote her exactly."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "But, but before we go farther down this line, obviously you don't have your new
business development guy in there so you can help document why it was good of you not to take on our new business and we are sort of flabbergasted that you got any reason not to take on our business and we are sorry we are with you, But we are with you for at least these ten people."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Excuse me, do you know on what basis you consider us
to be with you guys."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "We have our sole banking relationship with you and we have shared an
incredible amount of trust with you and divulged our Business practices and model and everything to you and our corporate financials, we knew that a large major competitor of ours is headquartered in St. Louis and we had no concept that there would be a conflict of interest issue, but... "
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "We don't have a conflict of interest."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "This comes out of left field that you are accusing us of being Arab terrorist or
something and not wanting to set up a basic account with your bread and butter services of your department. I think you are taking on other customers this year sometime, if you are still going to have a trust office in St. Louis, and we are sort of surprised you are not taking us on and we can't imagine a reason for it."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Ok, well I think Brian conveyed... "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Well those are pretty bad reasons and those end up with a demand letter, and
yes there will be extensive chronology and we will explain trust obligations and fiduciary duties and where we think we were in contract and we think we will have an explanation that wins. "
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "But we are not the right people to talk to about that, we
are just..."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "And like I said earlier, I don't see any point in having a discussion about that.
Obviously you guys provide a service, you got your new business development guy there on this phone call, either you are talking to us about the services you are going to provide, or what we need to do to be your customer."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust "So what are you stating at this point. That you are going to...."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "We got ten people that...."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "That you are going to force us to provide you services. or
what, I don't understand now what you want. "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "You are characterizing that as a threat, there are no threats here, our business
future dependent on these ten people for the next six months or year revenue, you took them out you didn't even threaten us before you did it, so we will try and save what we can, but probably since you got your team there you ought to think about how to make us a customer at least for these ten so that we can.... this damage. "
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Well we certainly never contracted with you or these ten
people."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Well I think we go to a referee on that. First you will get the demand letter, get
to respond to your version and then we go to a forum where they will make a ruling."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "And if I might add something here, this USA PATRIOT ACT that was identified as
a reason for not extending the escrow services to us might you guys explain how that applies to a company that has been incorporated and in good standing for three years in the state of Missouri, in addition to the fact that we have a trail of where the funds come from, we also have signatures on both financial and criminal discovery of these individuals where anyone can run a background check or financial background on these individuals. I mean, I am just really concerned why this USA PATRIOT ACT was brought into this when we don't have anything to do with that. "
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "The USA PATRIOT ACT specifically to your status of
business or your integrity it only... "
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Well according to Ed Higgins, he didn't see how this, where this even came from."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "What other customers has this been an issue with for you and maybe you
shouldn't be dealing with those types of customers? "
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "The USA PATRIOT ACT, when it was put in place,
caused us to have a clear set of rules on how we take on business."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Well according to Ed Higgins, he doesn't think that the USA PATRIOT ACT has
anything remotely to do with Medical Supply Chain, and what we are trying to do here."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "But, since you mentioned it the other day, we started looking at who you got
investments in. And you got some investments in some healthcare entities that are under the gun, they have either been indicated for anti-trust violations or illegal kick-back schemes and for us now looking at space alien excuse for not having our trust accounts hosted by you, we are starting to think conflict of interest explains it."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Yea, you know what...we are not sure...what's your..."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Yea, it is pretty serious and it goes beyond contract damages ok."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "We are not the right people to talk to if you..."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "I know you may not be the right people to talk about trust. That is why I was
trying to get your Vice Chairman ...[ Andrew Cesere, Vice Chairman of Trusts, US Bancorp, Indianopolis ], still haven't gotten to him, hopefully we can get this resolved today."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "We have already spoken with him[ Andrew Cesere,
Vice Chairman of Trusts, US Bancorp, Indianopolis ]… and explained the situation. If you want to talk about other things in the Bank and our policies, whatever, I mean, "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "No, I think we are going to focus on the Trust Department on US Bank for
sometime here, it is probably a three-year process, but we will get to know each other quite well. "
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Do you have any other questions today? "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "No you called us."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust , Detroit "Well we were just returning your call to Andy...[
Andrew Cesere, Vice Chairman of Trusts, US Bancorp, Indianopolis ] "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Well I think he ought to personally talk to us cause we are still not getting a good
explanation here."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "You are not looking for a good explanation you are
looking to force us to do the transaction."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "No, you guys are the ones that don't even threaten you just kill. But we are still
wondering how we can fix this."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Yea, the problem here is that we have these, we basically have, out of 300 resumes
we have thinned them down to approximately 15 of which 10 we sent out the contract and the escrow and then you guys decide that you don't want to do the escrow over a Patriot Act that we don't have anything do with in the first place. Now you claim that we do and I still don't understand where you are coming from that standpoint, but that is ok. In the mean time we tried to explain the situation and in fact we spoke with Ed, now who is Ed Higgins,"
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "He is ahead of personal trust in St. Louis."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Ok well when we spoke with Ed, Ed seemed to feel as though this doesn't have
anything to do with the USA PATRIOT ACT. And basically, that is what we are saying, but I will indicate to you this....Becky had already established the fact that Brian you and her had talked last week and you didn't see any problem with it and if you didn't see any problem with it, you also suggested we make a change on #10 of the escrow agreement, so that we could leverage the asset to create a line of credit here at the local level. And everything seemed to be going in order and then all of a sudden you guys come back and say well you are not going to do it and guys want to basically climb behind the Patriot Act as a basis for your decision, but The USA PATRIOT ACT doesn't have anything to do with what we are doing."
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "First off, that was a minor, that was part of our reason
that was a minor reason..."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Well, if I quote Becky correctly this morning on her conversation, it was the fact
that you don't know who all is involved in the Company, you don't know where these, where the Executives are that are running this company, in other words, you didn't have background information on the company itself to set up the trust. Why is that any of your business in the first places as it relates to setting up an escrow? That is my question, and again I think we are going to find out that we are going to constantly come back to this issue where you have a conflict of interest and because of your knowing our business model and how we are arriving at generating revenue and so on and so forth that you basically kill our escrow, so by killing our escrow, especially in this particular situation on these ten that we have sent the information out to, you have essentially cut off at least $300 and possibly $450 thousand dollars."
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "But they were our ten best you know, former principal of IBM, and people we
hand picked from all over the country at the best change of getting our hundreds of millions of dollars we count on in the next couple of years."
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "So all the conversations that we have documented since last week, have basically
indicated that you had no problem in doing the escrow in the first place, in fact, Brad you and I hammered out a Cost and Price and I would think..."
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis "You are missing a very important part of that, twice I
said to you I need to run this past something, and I stopped you and said it a second time. "
Sam Lipari, Medical Supply "Well let me ask you this Brian, then why don't you just set the escrow up? Why?
We don't have anything to do with the...
Well There is a conflict of interest Brian, and you know there is. And I don't know why you are hiding behind the
Patriot Act because the Patriot Act doesn't have anything to do with us. And you know it doesn't. And I am upset about it. I have spent two weeks working with Becky and Doug and You and everybody else, we've got basically $300 to $450 thousand dollars in the pipeline here that has been basically cutoff cause we don't have an escrow for these people to deposit and we are going to have to go back to them to try and save them if we can. And if we can't all this is really kind of a mute issue, it is just a fact that you don't want to do business with us because you have a conflict of interest with other companies that are doing banking business with you and frankly, you are right, if we ever get our business model off the ground, we are going to put them out of business. In fact, we may not have to the Justice Department has already indicted them, the Federal Trade Commission is after them, and not Medicare and Medicaid is after these GPO's. In addition to that, I have a glass pipe line to the New York Times, so if we really want to bring everybody into this thing and really nail down what is going on we can. All we asked for was a simple escrow so that we had a place to put our certification program candidates until they receive the weeks worth of training and we were able to identify whether or not they were going to be part of our organization or not. That is all we asked you people to do, instead, you guys have carried this thing farther, in other words, you want to know more information about the company, or you want to know about our background, or you want to know whose involved in this because there is a conflict of interest and that is the only reason you guys wouldn't provide these services. You would provide them for anyone else that walked in off of the street, but you have a conflict. So admit you have a conflict and let! 's move on. If you don't have a conflict, then set the escrow up.
Lars Anderson US BANK Corporate Trust, Detroit "Sam, this is Lars, Brian and I have talked about this as he
bounced the transaction off of me to find out if we should do the deal and I couldn't see good reason to do the deal, but we have never talked about any kind of conflict of interest. I don't even know where you are coming from that standpoint."
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis "I don't have any idea what he is talking about. "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "I understand you are not admitting it yet. But you have not come up with a
plausible non-pretextual reason to not set up escrow accounts. We are going to be looking at... "
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis "We have to know our customers I have to have
complete information and to know our customers and to know who we are doing business with. "
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "I don't think a US Bank knows too much about US Bank, but in terms of, we
filled out credit application we got business plan, you got all that information, and once you got all that information then we are surprised you are not accepting the account. "
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis "We take on a trust business to stand alone, and we have
our own acceptance criteria and it's got nothing to do with what someone else got your financials or whatever...".
Bret Landrith, Medical Supply "Like I said, I don't think US Bank is a coherent entity and I am really alarmed at
some of the laissez-faire lack of control of practices that you have and I am sure we are going to see a lot of disturbing things. Unless you are here are calling us to set up some trust accounts we will probably do our next communications in correspondence."
Brian Kabbes US BANK Corporate Trust, St. Louis "Ok, well we are trying to explain to you today the reason
why we are not taking on the account. And what is that reason exactly, because we have gone...." |
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US BANK FIVE STAR SCREWED
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I am the corporate counsel for Medical Supply in Medical Supply Chain, Inc. v.
US Bancorp, et al.
Here is a transcript that is part of a 10th Circuit Appeals case. We are expecting the court to grant our
injunctive relief request to keep US Bank from using the USA PATRIOT Act against us, to prevent us from competing with the hospital suppliers they have concentrated their investment banking efforts in. The act does not cover us and seems to have been just a convenient lie to commit antitrust monopolization market that lacks competition and routinely overcharges American citizens.
The following transcript illustrates the difficulty a legitimate business in a fiduciary relationship with US
Bank can run into. The names and organizations of the people involved are in bold. You are welcome to put my comments and this transcript on your site.
Our action against US Bancorp, its CEO Jerry A. Grundhofer, Andrew Cesere, Susan Paine, Lars
Anderson, Brian Kabbes, US Bank, Piper Jaffray and the above-named officers is in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court is hearing the matter on the briefs and is past the 75th day of making its decision. The case seeks injunctive relief preventing US Bancorp-Piper Jaffray from promoting anticompetitive contracts in healthcare through its securities marketing and advertising.
Medical Supply considered seeking an injunction against the spin off, but then determined US Bancorp
remains completely liable for the expected profits Medical Supply would have gained had the defendants not prevented it from internally capitalizing its entry into market.
All Americans will continue to pay 20-60% too much for medical supplies, many of us have had our
health insurance premiums drastically increased and others have lost access to healthcare altogether.
Medical Supply's investigation discovered that US Bancorp-Piper Jaffray had determined the lack of
competition or inefficiency in the hospital supply market without a Web-based supplier like Medical Supply Chain, Inc. costs Americans $23 billion dollars a year. US Bancorp profited from that through marketing wildly optimistic Internet supplier IPO's, then later, after the Internet bubble had burst, by assisting the existing monopolistic suppliers to acquire controlling shares and prevent competition from the new technology.
Medical Supply Chain, Inc. was the last independent Web-based hospital supply distributor. In Mr.
Ashcroft's home state of Missouri, the first use of his new USA PATRIOT ACT by the nation's eighth largest bank appears to have been to suppress competition and to keep hospital costs up.
Bret D. Landrith, Esq.9/16/03
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Medical Supply Chain Inc Alleges US Bancorp Illegal Conduct
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