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Chris Parker

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How Big Medicine and Politics as Usual Sabotaged Obamacare

By Chris Parker
May 8, 2014

It was the winter of our discontent, 2009. A season of bank failures, massive layoffs and $5-a-gallon gasoline. Finally, a fractured country could at least agree on one thing: This had to change. So President Barack Obama set out to deactivate the next bomb awaiting the U.S. economy, the one...
How Medicare Became a Thieves' Bazaar

In Dallas and across the country, hospitals, doctors and dealers have made Medicare the nation’s sweetest crime. The feds are now trying to shutter the door.

By Chris Parker
Apr 25, 2013

Houston Riverside General Hospital specialized in the kind of medicine its better-heeled brethren did their best to avoid: treating the poor, the mentally ill, the drug-addled. So it's no surprise that the 95-year-old nonprofit — formerly known as Houston Negro Hospital — shared the same broken finances as the people...
The 10 Most Corrupt Tax Loopholes

If Mitt Romney won't tell you which need to be closed, we will

By Chris Parker
Oct 11, 2012

A year ago Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, studied the tax returns of 280 corporations. What it found was a Beltway version of a Mafia protection scheme. From 2008 to 2010, at least 30 Fortune 500 companies — including PepsiCo, Verizon, Wells Fargo and DuPont — paid...
Barbarians in the Ivory Tower

America's for-profit colleges offer education only a con man (or a congressman) could love.

By Chris Parker
Aug 9, 2012

Bobby Ruffin, Jr. was only 14 when a recruiter from Ashford University called. The Birmingham, Michigan, boy thought he'd clicked on a link promising help finding money for college. It was actually just a lead generator for the for-profit, online school's sales staff. At the time, Bobby was an A...
For-Profit Colleges Only a Con Man Could Love

Barbarians in the Ivory Tower

By Chris Parker
Aug 2, 2012

Bobby Ruffin, Jr. was only 14 when a recruiter from Ashford University called. The Birmingham, Michigan, boy thought he'd clicked on a link promising help finding money for college. It was actually just a lead generator for the for-profit, online school's sales staff. At the time, Bobby was an A...
The Feds Attack Online Poker

On Black Friday, The Justice Department killed a $2.5 billion industry.

By Chris Parker
Mar 1, 2012

When you've turned nothing into something once already, you tend to feel you can do it again. There's faith your luck will turn. Perhaps it's delusion. But for a professional poker player, self-confidence is essential. So it is for Walter Wright, who now finds himself in Costa Rica. He left...