Organized Crime and Union Health Plans

Robert Fitch reports:

Let's face it: union-administered health insurance funds provide irresistible opportunities for labor leaders. First there's patronage: hiring friends and relatives. Then there are the conventions, junkets and retreats provided by the plans and the providers. And for those willing to cross the line of legality, there's the chance to take kickbacks from health care vendors.

Many officials are charged, but few go to prison, even when money allegedly winds up in Mafia hands. Last month federal prosecutors lost a criminal case in Brooklyn in which they charged that the Genovese crime family leaned on two International Longshoremen's Association local presidents to, among other things, choose a favored health vendor.

Evidently, the jury was convinced by the defense's argument that the union leaders were under duress. Even Lawrence Ricci, the principal accused Genovese figure, was acquitted, although he disappeared during the trial and never testified. (His body was found last month in the trunk of a car in Union, N.J.)

If we ever got nationalized health care who's to say the Genovese crime family wouldn't want to get their cut through some health care union?