The first fully implemented year of Medicare's recovery audit contractors in Florida was a costly one for health care providers.

They returned nearly $125 million to the government last year, a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid showed.

The pilot program in Florida, New York and California ends on March 27. Then, CMS will select four regional auditing companies to run the national program starting later this year.

Of the $371 million in improper Medicare payments the RAC program identified in fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, they found $128.7 million in Florida. Statewide, the auditors collected $124.6 million in overpayment from health care providers and paid them back $4.1 million for Medicare underpayments.

Florida inpatient hospitals returned $115.1 million in overpayment, outpatient hospitals returned $3.4 million and physicians returned $5.1 million. All of the money returned went to inpatient hospitals.

According to CMS, almost half of the improper payments were the result of incorrect billing coding. One-third were ruled medically unnecessary -- a category that has frustrated Florida hospitals because of the auditors second-guessing decisions of clinical staff. Starting last summer, CMS required the RAC programs to have medical directors to review claims.

Heart failure and shock was the most common type of claim where RAC found overpayment in Florida, with $9.5 million collected.

In the state, 14 percent of RAC overpayment claims were appealed, with 8.9 percent of all claims being overturned on appeal.

Many Florida hospitals executives said the RAC filed too many baseless cases because the auditors receive their fee even after the claim is overturned by an administrative law judge. In the national program, the auditors will lose their fee if the claim is overturned on appeal.

Casinos will be required to report winnings of $5,000 or more to the Internal Revenue Service, and will hand gamblers a tax form to record the payout.

It's actually a compromise from an original IRS proposal that would have made casinos withhold 25 percent of tournament winnings for tax purposes.

“There was such an outrage and outcry from the community, to suck all that money out” that the government changed its mind, Marissa Chien, a gambling tax expert in Las Vegas, told The Press of Atlantic City for Monday's newspapers.

“It allows the IRS to keep track of poker players, because poker is real big now,” said Chien, who is co-author of the book “Tax Help For Gamblers.”

Kevin Lillo, a shift manager at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, said the new rule will be little more than “a slight inconvenience.”

“It's always been the law” to report winnings, he said. “All they're doing is making the casino enforce it. They're seeing money that's falling through the cracks.”

Bruce Kramer of Voorhees has never won $5,000 in a single tournament, but he could see how it would be a problem for serious players.

Gamblers across the country are already required to report all their winnings, whether it's from tournaments, slot machines or table games.

“If you're already reporting your income and being truthful and honest, this shouldn't affect you one bit,” Chien said. “But for those who try to stay off the radar, this is going to make it that much harder.”

In a Friday night ruling rushed into print ahead of the next scheduled exercise on Monday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's decision that no emergency existed that would justify Bush's intervention.

The Navy is engaged in "long-planned, routine training exercises" and has had ample time to take the steps that the law requires - conduct a thorough review of the environmental consequences and propose effective measures to minimize the harm to whales and other marine mammals, the three-judge panel said.

The court noted that the Navy has been conducting similar exercises for years, has agreed in the past to restrictions like the ones it is now challenging, and was sued by environmental groups in the current case nearly a year ago. The lower-court judge reviewed the evidence and found nothing to support the Navy's claim that the protective measures would interfere with vital training or hamper national security, the court said.

Past rulings have established that "there is no 'national defense exception' " to the National Environmental Policy Act, the court said. That law requires government agencies to review projects that might harm the environment and propose reasonable protective measures.

KENNETH L. LAY

Birth date: April 15, 1942.

Career: Former chairman and CEO. Founded Enron in 1985 when his Houston Natural Gas merged with InterNorth in Omaha, Neb., and became chairman and CEO the next year. Stepped down as CEO in February 2001 when Jeffrey Skilling took over; resumed the role when Skilling abruptly resigned on Aug. 14, 2001. Resigned as chairman and CEO Jan. 23, 2002; resigned from board Feb. 4, 2002. Appeared before Congress in 2002 and invoked the Fifth Amendment. Alleged to have sold more than 4 million shares of stock for $184 million from 1996-2001. Received bonuses of $18.1 million in 1997-2000. Lives in a $7.4 million penthouse near downtown Houston.

JEFFREY K. SKILLING

Birth date: Nov. 25, 1953.

Career: Former CEO and director. Holds an MBA from Harvard and worked for McKinsey & Co. before joining Enron in 1990. Became president and chief operating officer in 1996, then succeeded Lay as CEO in February 2001. Resigned on Aug. 14, 2001, citing personal reasons. Testified twice before Congress in February 2002. Claimed no knowledge of intimate details of Enron's financial dealings. Sold 1.3 million shares of stock for $70.6 million and transferred 2 million shares back to Enron from June 1996 to November 2001. Received $13.2 million in bonuses 1997-2000. He remains a defendant in a lawsuit alleging he knowingly endorsed deceptive and misleading financial statements. An indictment was unsealed Feb. 19 charging him with 35 counts of fraud, conspiracy, filing false statements to auditors and insider trading. He has pleaded not guilty.

ANDREW S. FASTOW

Birth date: Dec. 22, 1961.

Career: Former chief financial officer who pleaded guilty Jan. 14, 2004, to conspiracy in a deal that called for a 10-year sentence and for him to help prosecutors in the investigation. Free on bond. One of Skilling's first hires in 1990. Indicted Oct. 31, 2002, on 78 counts of wire and securities fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction for running various financial schemes designed to enrich him, his family and friends. Counts later increased to 98. Earned at least $45 million from LJM partnerships, investment vehicles named after his wife and two children. Pushed out of Enron on Oct. 24, 2001, the day after Lay expressed confidence in him to analysts. Alleged to have sold more than 687,000 shares of Enron stock for $33.7 million from June 1996 to November 2001. Pleaded guilty in January 2004 to two counts of conspiracy; agrees to cooperate with prosecutors and serve 10 years in prison when his help is no longer needed.

RICHARD A. CAUSEY

Birth date: Jan. 9, 1960.

Career: Former chief accounting officer. Handled Enron audits for Arthur Andersen LLP before joining Enron. When the LJM investments were proposed to Enron's board of directors in 1999, he and chief risk officer Rick Buy were assigned to review all Enron transactions with LJM. Fired Feb. 14, 2002, after release of an in-house report noting his failure to review the deals. Mentioned repeatedly by title in Fastow indictment as having a secret agreement with Fastow that LJMs would never lose money on deals with Enron. Told David Duncan, the top Enron auditor at Arthur Andersen, that Enron didn't like another Andersen auditor's objections to grouping investment vehicles known as Raptors to hide that two of the four that were bleeding cash. Alleged to have sold about 209,000 Enron shares for $13.3 million. Also received bonus payments of more than $1.5 million from 1997-2000 when Enron was inflating profits and hiding debt based largely on the partnerships he was supposed to police. Indictment charging him with conspiracy and fraud unsealed Jan. 22, 2004. Expanded indictment unsealed Feb. 19 to include new charges against Skilling and increased charges against Causey; 35 counts for Skilling, 31 counts for Causey. Has pleaded not guilty.

OTHERS:

Michael Kopper: Former Fastow lieutenant who pleaded guilty Aug. 21, 2002 to federal conspiracy and money laundering charges related to Enron's fall and agreed to give up $12 million in illegal profits. Kopper admitted he ran or helped create several partnerships that earned him and others millions of dollars, including kickbacks he funneled to Fastow, while hiding debt and inflating profits at Enron. Has not yet been sentenced and is cooperating with prosecutors. Declined to testify before Congress.

Lea Fastow: Wife of Andrew Fastow and former assistant treasurer at Enron. Pleaded guilty May 6, 2004, to a federal misdemeanor tax crime for helping her husband hide ill-gotten income from the government. She originally pleaded guilty to a felony tax crime in January, but withdrew that plea in April. She was sentenced to the maximum of a year in prison and ordered to surrender there July 12.

Ben Glisan Jr.: Added to an expanded Fastow indictment unsealed in May 2003. Glisan became Enron treasurer in March 2000, and earned $1 million in May of that year on a March investment of $5,826 in Fastow's Southampton Place partnership. Also negotiated for Enron in some of its transactions with Raptor. Worked with Fastow and Kopper in creating and running LJM2. Fired from Enron in November 2001. Indicted in April 2003 on charges of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, falsify books and commit securities and wire fraud. He tried to cut a deal with prosecutors, but ended up pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy in September 2003. He was immediately sentenced to prison for five years and became the first former Enron executive to serve time. He later began cooperating with prosecutors.

Dan Boyle: Also added to an expanded Fastow indictment. Charged with conspiracy to falsify books and commit wire fraud related to Enron's deal to have Merrill Lynch buy three electricity-generating power barges. Boyle's lawyer says he had no authority to sign off on anything. Fastow promised Merrill that Enron would buy back the barges in 2000, which it did, booking a $12 million profit that was really a loan. Trial set to begin Aug. 18.

A federal judge on Friday delayed a decision on whether to approve a plan to distribute the money, part of a $40 billion lawsuit alleging that financial institutions that worked with Enron participated in the accounting fraud that led to the company's downfall.

U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon also held off on whether to approve $688 million in attorneys' fees being requested by San Diego-based Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, the law firm for the lead plaintiffs in the case. If approved, the attorneys' fees would be the largest in a securities fraud case.

After a 4 1/2 hour hearing during which attorneys, Enron investors and former Enron employees argued both for and against the distribution plan and the attorney fees, Harmon said she would make decisions on both issues as soon as possible.

Patrick Coughlin, attorney for the regents of the University of California, who are the lead plantiffs, called the plan to distribute the $7.2 billion "fair and reasonable."

"The plan is doing whatever it can to help employees get whatever they can," he said.

In general, the plan is calculating shares of the settlement fund using a formula that factors in such things as when a security was bought or sold, the purchase price paid and the type of stock that was bought.

Enron stock sold for as much as $90 per share before plummeting to as low as $1 right before the company declared bankruptcy. But under the plan, shareholders and investors are set to get only a fraction of what they lost after the once mighty energy giant spiraled into bankruptcy.

To be eligible for the settlement, investors and shareholders needed to have bought Enron or Enron-related securities between Sept. 9, 1997, and Dec. 2, 2001.

About 1.5 million individuals are eligible to receive money from the settlement fund.

Coughlin also asked Harmon to approve the $688 million in attorneys' fees, saying the amount is part of an agreement his law firm signed with the regents when it first took the case six years ago to be given 9.5 percent of any settlement.

In justifying the fees, he cited several reasons, including that the 9.5 percent was far lower than the standard 33 percent most lawyers get in similar cases; the complexity of the lawsuit; and the risk involved in taking on a case that offered no guarantee of any settlements.

"This is the largest class (action) settlement ever. There is no case comparable to this result," he said.

But attorneys for several investors objected to the distribution plan and the attorneys' fees.

Avi Garbow, an attorney for former Enron workers who lost money through the company's savings plan and employee stock ownership plan, said the distribution plan was unfair because it doesn't treat all investors and shareholders equally and some will be compensated more than they should be at the expense of others.

Lawrence Schonbrun, who represents another investor, called the attorney fees being requested exorbitant and "an affront to every working person in this country."

The $7.2 billion comes mostly from settlements made with such financial institutions as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup.

There are still several financial institutions that remain as defendants in the Enron case, including Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston and Barclays Bank PLC. Several former Enron officers also remain, including former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling.

But the lawsuit has been on hold since an appeals court last year ruled shareholders and investors could not sue as a class, which would have allowed them to pool their resources to sue as a group and have more leverage to settle the case out of court.

The U.S. Supreme Court in January refused to hear arguments in the lawsuit. The high court in a similar case gave a measure of protection from securities lawsuits to suppliers, banks, accountants and law firms that do business with corporations engaging in securities fraud.

Attorneys for Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston and Barclays Bank PLC have said they will again ask Harmon to drop their clients from the lawsuit in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in the similar case.

Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, entered bankruptcy proceedings in December 2001 after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions in debt or make failing ventures appear profitable. The collapse wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.

Enron founder Kenneth Lay and Skilling were convicted in 2006 for their roles in the company's collapse. Skilling is serving a sentence of more than 24 years. Lay's convictions for conspiracy, fraud and other charges were wiped out after he died of heart disease in 2006.