I wonder how much air time this is getting - if one person was doing this - why not others in other states/places?

I'm shocked. Shocked! Having been given the power to decide who gets medical treatment and when, that government workers would use that power to extract bribes from helpless citizens. Nothing like power over life and death to make you open up your wallet to get these scumbags to do their jobs that you are already paying them to do.

libs complain about private insurance carriers refusing to pay out, what are they going to say when some bureaucrat demands their retirement savings or sexual favors from their children?

I would guess this is the liberal concept of entrepreneurship.

If they can get a few bucks for expediting welfare, just think of how much they'll be able to get for expediting medical care for someone having chest pains.

The entire $5B of deficit spending under Nancy Pelosi's dutiful watch has been for political slush funds for generations to come. Cutting off the spigot is only the first step. Recouping the monies will be a much harder duty, as those "entitlements" are now seen as a Right under the US Constitution, and no one will give any of it up voluntarily.

I would NEVER have thought of government functionaries demanding baksheesh for services they were legally supposed to provide in the first place.

No, really.

Well, this certainly never happens in private commerce, does it?

"Well, this certainly never happens in private commerce, does it?"

Uh, we're talking GOVERNMENT CONTROL of services. "Private commerce" is commerce OF YOUR OWN CHOICE.

You have no CHOICE under government control.

In a free market and employee who did such a thing would be swiftly exposed and destroyed. Customers would flee such a company and find alternatives for the services.

But a government worker, protected by the SEIU, is virtually invulnerable. There will be no repercussions. The union will fight to conceal the identity of the individual and keep his job. With nowhere else to go the public will be forced to choose between paying whatever ransom the corrupt bureaucrat demands or foregoing whatever service is needed.

Since the likelihood of them loosing their job is virtually nil, protection from the union and the bureaucracy and the public having nowhere else to turn, what incentive is there for these government thugs to NOT victimize the public?

Of course we can only guess her political loyalties, but guessing is not good enough.
Can we get a photogragh of Valerie Herron? That might be very helpfull just knowing her cultural loyalties.

This is nothing to worry about, we have Eric Holder's Justice Department upholding truth and The American way.

"If they can get a few bucks for expediting welfare, just think of how much they'll be able to get for expediting medical care for someone having chest pains."

They may end up getting a few ounces of lead buckshot in their head, if they try it with someone desperate enough.
And it would be justified.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

jim m @9,
Exactly! The very fact that it took "at least five months until anonymous tips led to an investigation -- leading to her indictment almost a year and a half later" proves your case.

In the private sector, I believe that by the second and certainly the third anonymous tip the investigation would begin in ernest and it certainly wouldn't take a year and a half to fire someone.

Government tends to run way to slow in investigating their own.

Let none of us ever forget that the "Democrats" know no other "career path" than that of lying about sharing whatever may be looted from the rest of us to people too damned stupid, mean-spirited and/or greedy to know they're being lied to and/or to care.

Envy-motivated, hatred-engined and the consequential rage-driven "Democrats" are institutionalized thieves by any other name and know no other way of "making a living."

Every "Democrat" that runs for office runs for a bigger slice, unearned and undeserved, of our pie.

Which is why "Democrats" and those others who suffer the Fascissocialist Psychosis always morbidly deny and pathologically project accordingly. And otherwise engage in politics as if their very lives are on the line.

They are.

We Republicans and the genuine libertarians (as different from those libertines who long ago stole the Libertarian Party) run for office and either win - to serve -- or lose to return to productive lives.

Food for thought.