Enchanted Circle

About the Book

KACIE DUGAN is middle-aged and menopausal; she has no patience with incompetent insurance salesmen or greedy executives. When she learns that her employer, Freedom HMO, intentinally delays approval for urgently needed medical care and payment of medical claims, she refuses to just look the other way. CAINE DANIELS, her boss, thinks it´s really no big deal. There´s nothing new about sacrificing the dispensable poor and weak for the good of the rich and powerful. When the best doctors in Albuquerque threaten to drop out of the HMO because of late incorrect payments and fee schedules that pay less than half what they get from non-HMO patients, a war of greed breaks out around her. The man responsible for selling out to the HMO, Republic General Hospital´s CEO, is found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. And when Kacie has the audacity to take on the powerful HMO, her ambitious boss, and a psychopathic hospital administrator, she finds herself in the crosshairs of ruthless men on all sides of the conflict. Her stubborn refusal to compromise her integrity may very well cost her her life.

About the Author

Paula Gott has held titles of, “vice president of operations” for a third party administrator; “associate executive director” for a publicly traded HMO. She retired in 1999 to write a series of mystery novels using the insurance industry as a backdrop. “Enchanted Circle” is the first of her “Circle” series. She and her husband, Joe, and two Norwich Terriers, Rosie and Irish, make their home north of Branson, Missouri. They discovered the natural beauty of New Mexico several years ago. She spent six months in Taos, researching data, exploring the Enchanted Circle, meeting the people, and working on this novel. The plot and characters are fictitious; the data is from published reports and government statistics. Most of the experiences of HMO patients have been reported in newspapers and on television. Colleagues in the insurance industry have contributed experiences, suspicions, and anecdotal stories, as well. She supports election and insurance reform.