More Frist Shenanigans by Kevin

This looks worse and worse for our upstanding Senator:

When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist asked a trustee to sell all his stock in his family’s hospital corporation, a large-scale sell-off by HCA Inc. insiders was under way.

Shares of the Nashville, Tenn.-based hospital company were near a 52-week peak in June when Frist and HCA insiders were selling off their shares — just about a month before the price dropped.

Information about the insiders’ moves was publicly available through disclosures required by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

About 2.3 million shares, worth about $112 million, were sold by HCA insiders from January through June, with sales getting larger as the spring wore on, said Mark LoPresti of Thomson Financial. In May and June, 770,629 shares were sold for total gains of $42 million, he said.

The sales, which included moves by Hospital Corporation of America’s chief executive, treasurer, senior vice president for government programs and several directors, were among the largest insider selloffs analysts had seen, LoPresti said. Many officers made their largest trades ever in April, only to top them again in May and June, LoPresti said.

So Frist, who supposedly placed his shares in a blind trust, ordered that not-so-blind trust to sell shares in HCA at the same time other insiders were selling — a period that just preceded a sharp decline in the stock price. A decline in the stock price that was driven by the public acknowledgement of issues that the insiders who sold their stock were in a position to know.

This demands an investigation.