WASHINGTON — Representative Shelley Berkley’s bid for a Senate seat in Nevada will most likely remain under an ethics cloud through Election Day after the House ethics committee disclosed Monday that it had appointed a formal investigative panel to look into allegations that she used her office to help her husband’s medical practice.
The move by the ethics committee suggests that a preliminary investigation found at least some evidence of wrongdoing. This is only the second time in nearly two years that the committee has formally opened a full, new investigation into a sitting House member.
Ms. Berkley has been accused of wrongly intervening with Medicare
officials in 2008 after they threatened to close a troubled kidney
transplant center in Las Vegas where her husband’s kidney-care practice
served as consulting physicians.
Ms. Berkley over the last five years has also played a leading role in
the House in pushing an agenda advocated by the Renal Physicians
Association, while her husband, Dr. Larry Lehrner, served as a national
leader in the group. That included appealing to House colleagues to
prevent cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors like her
husband who perform dialysis.
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