Blog No. 187 - Dealing With HCF in July 2022, Part 4: 24 February 2025

Part 4 of my 8 July 2022 letter to Mark Johnson, Chairman of HCF.

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These ever so happy and seemingly friendly women went to Tasmania with us.  Here they were on the 17th of March 2015.  On the left is Anne Ryan; she refused to come to Margaret’s funeral.  On the right is Sue Chapman; she came to the funeral but refused to come near me.

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Even when evil shows a pretty face, evil is never beautiful.  Evil is only ever evil and it is always ugly.  

Margaret deserved so much more than false friendship from these evil women.

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Tasmanian scenery 17th of March 2015.

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I will resume…

I concluded my second letter to you – the one dated 5 May 2022 - by saying this. “At this point, it appears to me that the only meaningful task that the Directors of HCF are able to engage in, is “damage control”.  As part of a “damage control” exercise, the Directors of HCF might wish to consider any and all of the following actions. Immediate suspension of Ms Jack pending an investigation by external investigators of what HCF has done and the extent of its breaches of legislative requirements. If investigation reveals – as I believe is likely – that Ms Jack has been a central figure in unlawful actions by HCF, she should be dismissed. A full confession should be made immediately to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.  If HCF confesses to the ACCC before any other funds, it might be able to obtain a lesser penalty than it might otherwise sustain. HCF should give deep consideration to what form of redress it should make to the victims of its unlawful conduct.  Those victims include Lift Cancer Care Services and the cancer patients whose claims for treatment have been treated with contempt by HCF.  Those victims include other health service providers who have been denied payment for services provided to their patients solely because HCF has decided to ignore its legal obligations in relation to those providers.  Some of those victims may well now be dead.  Some of the health providers have probably been driven into bankruptcy.  The list of victims is likely to be extensive. Any redress for the victims of HCF misconduct should be compensated not just by payment of the money that should always have been paid, but by payment of specific compensation based on the fact that they have been victims of crime.  If victims are dead, efforts should be made to identify their next of kin so that the appropriate compensation can be paid to the estate of the dead victims. If a preliminary check of HCF records reveals that the legal advisers to HCF have been involved in assisting in what has been going on (in effect, assisting HCF to commit crimes) the relevant documents containing any such legal advice should be provided immediately to the ACCC. Until you and your fellow Directors are convinced on the basis of persuasive evidence that no impropriety should be attributed to the HCF legal advisers, any future legal advice in relation to these matters should be obtained from legal advisers who might not subsequently be found to have played a role in what has gone on.” Very foolishly, it seems that you and your fellow Directors have done the absolute minimum that you thought might be necessary to avoid the problems raised by my letters.  That minimum seems to have been ordering Ms Jack to permit payment of Lift Cancer Care Services and payment of my outstanding accounts.  That minimum might have been enough to make me go away – and it might even have been enough to keep the government regulatory agencies at bay - if Ms Jack and her cronies had bothered to do as you and the Board (apparently) instructed.  Unfortunately, her desire to punish Lift Cancer Care Services has outweighed all other consideration - hence the latest refusal by HCF to pay the outstanding invoices. In case it is not yet completely clear, the latest behaviour by the company of which you are the Chairman of Directors, is utterly disgusting and I have had enough. I will do all in my power to ensure that HCF and the dishonest people at senior management level in HCF who are personally responsible for this disgusting conduct, pay the full penalties permitted and imposed by law. If you or your fellow Directors wish to somehow avoid personal liability, you will need to act very quickly. Margaret’s Health, My Health As you have probably worked out by now, my involvement in trying to bring an end to this crime spree by HCF has arisen because my wife Margaret Redden has cancer.  Her cancer is located in her ampullar and it is not treatable.  When originally diagnosed in June 2020, the doctors (in their roundabout way) indicated that she might be dead by Christmas 2020.  Given that I was lucky enough to be able to marry the finest human being I have ever met, I found the news of Margaret’s diagnosis, very distressing.  Unsurprisingly, Margaret found it distressing also. So here we are in July 2022 and my beautiful Margaret is still alive.  What happened?  The simple answer is we do not know.  There have now been two separate occasions where it looked as if the end was very close indeed, and on both occasions a major miracle has occurred.  On each occasion, the cancer did a major retreat from the brink of death to a less threatening form.  The cancer is still there though.  When the time comes, the cancer will probably shake off the miracles and demolish Margaret’s body. Margaret’s cancer had a dramatic impact on my own physical health.  Shortly after her diagnosis, I began to experience episodes of being unable to breath.  Try holding your breath for a while and see how it feels.  It is not fun.  My health issues went beyond breathing difficulties.  I developed spasming coughs that never went away, making sleep impossible for months in a row.  For a while in 2021, I stopped going to bed but stayed upright on the sofa, knowing that the coughing would destroy any attempt at sleep.  I spent periods doing what I dubbed “Perimeter Prowling” – walking continuously round and round the kitchen and lounge room, knowing that if I could keep it up for about 30 minutes, the coughing would probably settle down.  Sometimes the coughing did not settle down though.  I have permanent damage to the xiphoid in my chest.  I have to clutch it to keep it from bursting open when I sneeze. My own physical problems did not end at inability to breath and coughing.  I also experienced massive stomach bloating and massive pain.  For months on end, the only meal I could be reasonably sure of being able to eat was breakfast - and then towards the end of that nightmare, even breakfast became dodgy.  I lost 35 kilograms in weight at the height of my health issues.  If you get that paragon of law compliance (or should I say Queen of Crime?) Sheena Jack to check the records at HCF, she can tell you the dates when I was hospitalised. So, what does all this personal history stuff mean?  It means that I nearly died on several occasions and the probability is that Margaret will die from her cancer.  We don’t know when, but the doctors will probably be vindicated in the end.  They are pretty knowledgeable people – as well as being kind and decent people – in total contrast to the people who run HCF.

Will continue in Blog No. 188.