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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Law 101: Anyone Ever Heard of a Relator?

No, it's not someone who is involved with the sale and acquisiton of homes.

A relator (pronounced raletor) is a person on whose behalf an action is maintained by government prosecutors as they expose potential criminal wrongdoing of others. Usually, the relator is employed by these others. And they are more known by others as whistleblowers:

A whistleblower is the one who usually reveals wrongdoing within an organization to those in position of authority, and normally provide insider information unaware to the prosecutors. As a result, close to 20 such cases, with the pharmaceutical industry, have been settled in the past several years- each in the amout of hundreds of million dollars. Most of this money goes to state medicaid programs, which are funded by both states and the government. Also, about half of the receipients of Medicaid are children. Overall, there are around 100 million citizens that have our government provide thier health care in some way that costs the United States besides Medicaid and this cost around 500 billion dollars.

The reasons these rare individuals, the whistleblowers, take such action remains a mystery, and are viewed by others in several ways, with both positive and negative tones.

More to follow, which all will relate to a common theme in the posts to come in the future.

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