Sure, people should probably make an effort to resolve their debts, but it seems like one of the largest collectors of medical debt, Accretive Health, might have taken their tactics to a new low:

Collection activities extended from obstetrics to the emergency room. In July 2010, an Accretive manager told staff members at Fairview that they should “get cracking on labor and delivery,” since there is a “good chunk to be collected there,” according to company e-mails.

Employees were told to stall patients entering the emergency room until they had agreed to pay a previous balance, according to the documents. Employees in the emergency room, for example, were told to ask incoming patients first for a credit card payment. If that failed, employees were told to say, “If you have your checkbook in your car I will be happy to wait for you,” internal documents show.

Employees at Accretive’s client hospitals ask patients to make “point of service” payments before they receive treatment. Until she went to Fairview for her son Maxx’s ear tube surgery in November, Marcia Newton, a stay-at-home mother in Corcoran, Minn., said she had never been asked to pay for care before receiving it. “They were really aggressive about getting that money upfront,” she said in an interview.

Ms. Newton was shocked to learn that the employees were debt collectors. “You really feel hoodwinked,” she said.

Republican candidate Jesse Kelly, who is facing Democrat Ron Barber in the special election to complete Gabby Giffords' congressional term, is getting national attention today for his statement that health care is a privilege to be earned, rather than a right. Along the way, Kelly expresses his standard belief that health care, like everything else, would be better if government had no involvement at all. Kelly's words:

My belief system is this. The health care for anybody but especially for our nation. The highest quality and lowest cost can only be delivered without the government. What I believe is that all things we drive, we do, health care, anything, is a privilege to some extent. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those are inalienable rights endowed by your creator. If you’re claiming a right, if you’re going to say anything’s a right, if you’re going to say you have a right to a cell phone, then who has the responsibility to pay for it? That’s what I believe.

Wonkette compares Kelly to Miss South Carolina Teen USA.

The New York Times looks at today's Supreme Court hearing on SB 1070:

Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared inclined to uphold a controversial part of Arizona’s aggressive 2010 immigration law, based on their questions on Wednesday at a Supreme Court argument.

“You can see it’s not selling very well,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing and its first Hispanic justice, told Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., referring to a central part of his argument.

Mr. Verrilli, representing the federal government, had urged the court to strike down part of the law requiring state law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop if the officials have reason to believe that the person might be an illegal immigrant.

“Why don’t you try to come up with something else?” Justice Sotomayor asked Mr. Verrilli.

Talking Points Memo focuses on a particularly interesting detail about Justice Scalia's line of questioning:

In his fervent defense Wednesday of Arizona’s right to crack down on illegal immigration, Justice Antonin Scalia likened immigration enforcement to crackdowns on bank robbers.

Nothing against Ingrid Michaelson, who will be performing at the Rialto Theatre on Sunday night, but her solo multitracked a capella cover of Rhianna's "We Found Love" should probably signal the end of these super-adorable videos with various windows and images of people clapping, etc. The super-cute-to-the-point-of-being-annoying Pamplemoose drove the idea into the ground a few years ago, but yet, here's Michaelson going back to that well. It's not a bad rendition, but why?

The Tucson Weekly received a recent correction request from Corrections Corporation of America, the private-prison company that's taken a lot of heat from prison-reform activists and private-prison industry critics, such as the American Friends Service Committee and dozens of immigrant rights organizations.

The correction request comes from Mike Machak, public affairs manager for the Nashville-based company that has six facilities in Arizona, and has a prison project in the works off Wilmot Road near the federal and state prison complexes southeast of Tucson.

In his request, Machak refers to a press release regarding a press conference we wrote about in an April 23 post on the Range ("Immigrant Rights Groups Wants DeConcini Out of CCA, Private Prison Industry.").

The correction request:

The column includes a portion of a press release which inaccurately states that the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) supports laws like SB 1070. This is false and has its basis in a report by National Public Radio (NPR), which NPR subsequently corrected. It is CCA’s longstanding policy not to draft, lobby for or in any way promote crime, sentencing or detention legislation.

The press release included in the column states directly and in error: “CCA stands to profit substantially from recent legislative attacks on migrant communities and supports laws like SB 1070."

The full correction from NPR can be found here: http://www.npr.org/2010/10/28/130833741/prison-economics-help-drive-ariz-immigration-law. It says, in part, “This story did not mean to suggest that the Corrections Corporation of America was the catalyst behind the law or that it took a corporate position in favor of the legislation.”

More directly to the error in your column, the NPR correction states, “…we didn't mean to suggest that CCA wrote the language.”

Machak is referring to an October 2010 report from National Public Radio that became the focus for many fighting the private-prison industry across the country and in Arizona. The NPR clarification—not a correction—was issued in February 2012.

The NPR report referred to an ALEC meeting that included CCA and Arizona reps:

As we reported, Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce was the originator of the draft legislation that later became Arizona SB 1070. This story did not mean to suggest that the Corrections Corporation of America was the catalyst behind the law or that it took a corporate position in favor of the legislation.

In our 2010 broadcast piece we said: "Last December Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce sat in a hotel conference room with representatives from the Corrections Corporation of America and several dozen others. Together they drafted model legislation that was introduced into the Arizona Legislature two months later, almost word for word."

Although CCA did have a representative at the ALEC meeting where model legislation similar to 1070 was drafted, we didn't mean to suggest that CCA wrote the language.

In our March 29 story, "Morals Before Profit," when we first talked to immigrant-rights organizers starting their campaign to pressure former U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini into resignung from the CCA board of directors, we noted the NPR report, as well as the clarification that the NPR piece "didn't mean to suggest that CCA wrote the legislation for SB1070."

While company reps say the private-prison company didn't sit down with former state Sen. Russell Pearce to draft the SB 1070 legislation, the company does benefit from the detention of the undocumented. The CCA has facilities that currently house undocumented immigrants in Arizona, and it has imprisoned the undocumented in other facilities around the country.

Alma Hernandez shared her story with us about her and her friend in our "Morals Before Profit" story. The two women were detained after a routine traffic stop the sent to the CCA Eloy facility, transferred to El Paso and then to Louisiana, before their families were able to post bail.

It is also true that being a private company, CCA and other private prison groups, don't have to adhere to public-records laws that public prison facilities are subjected to. If public image is important, transparency may be the next step, which we discussed in our story "No Disclosure," on a report issued by AFSC on problems with private-prison operations and a severe lack of transparency.

Eric and Arnie discuss Secret Service, a comic from some big names in the biz that unfortunately disappoints our correspondents. Unfortunately, the whole thing is about British people and not the extra-curricular antics of our own Secret Service. However, Eric drops a Robert McKee reference, so that's cool.

• Would you rescue or throw this plant?

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James Beard Award nominee Janos Wilder is closing his Janos and J-Bar restaurants at the Westin La Paloma.

He announced the news to the staffers at the restaurants yesterday.

The fact that one of the area's most renowned restaurants is closing will come as a shock to foodies around the country. However, it's not a total surprise. In January, the Arizona Daily Star reported that Wilder had bemoaned the condition of the La Paloma in court documents related to a transfer of control of the struggling resort:

In another document, John S. Wilder, a premier Tucson chef widely known as Janos, said failure to move forward with the plan would jeopardize his ability to continue operating his restaurants at the Westin La Paloma.

"The lack of capital investment and general rehabilitation of the resort property has significantly impacted the ability of Wilder to maintain operations of the restaurant and bar," the document says.

Wilder, who runs Janos Restaurant and J Bar, said any delay in renovating the resort would likely lead to his closing those operations and laying off 44 employees.

More information on the closure is expected to be revealed later today.

The closure is not expected to affect Wilder's newest venture, Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails.

Great news for Steve Carter, a Philadelphia man who realized he was actually a missing child, whose biological mother disappeared taking him from his biological father.

Even better news for birthers, since part of Carter's journey involves a post-dated, somewhat fraudulent Hawaiian birth certificate. Now I don't know what to believe.

Carter always knew he was adopted, but when got older, he started to wonder who his biological parents were. That curiosity and a simple web search took him on a journey that would change his life and even now, there are parts of his story that remain a mystery.

While he's always been happy with his adoptive parents, something never felt quite right. Carter knew he was adopted from a Hawaiian orphanage when he was 4. But his birth certificate was created almost a year after his birth and he was labeled half-native Hawaiian.

• The Champions League semifinal at Playground

While it seems sort of quaint now, as a soccer fan, there was a time when it was nearly impossible to watch European matches (generally the pinnacle of the sport) somewhere that served alcohol in this town. Even as recently as the last World Cup, in which the American side was somewhat less than embarrassing for a little while, my friends and I drove around town for awhile trying to find a place to watch the US v. England match.

However, these days, Playground, a spot for attractive people to hang out with each other by night has become a soccer hangout from early mornings on weekends to afternoons for MLS matches and Champions League tilts. A few awesome things about soccer at Playground: the drinks are cheap (1/2 off all drinks when they're open for soccer before 7 pm) and the general enjoyment of watching live sports with other people. Today, I watched the Chelsea/Barcelona match next to a fan of Spanish soccer who disagreed with my general take on the match, but still, it's just fun to cheer along or against other people. Plus, it seems there are a wide array of fans, from the long time fans who seem to know every detail about the game and its history to a few people who are just getting into the sport. While the regular season for European league soccer is rapidly approaching its finish, the European championships are coming this summer and the MLS regular season rolls on, so there's still plenty to catch on Playground's big, fancy screen. Follow the Facebook group dedicated to keeping up with what matches will be shown for details.