A former hospital executive admitted Friday he paid a man to recruit homeless people for unnecessary medical treatment in a scheme to bilk government health programs out of millions of dollars.

Dr. Rudra Sabaratnam, who ran City of Angels Medical Center, faces up to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to paying a recruiter nearly $500,000 to find Skid Row homeless people with Medi-Cal or Medicare cards and transport them to the hospital.

In his plea agreement, which remains under seal, Sabaratnam also agreed to pay more than $4.1 million in restitution to Medicare and Medi-Cal.

Sabaratnam, 64, is scheduled to be sentenced June 8 on two counts of illegal patient referrals.

Messages left with City of Angels and Sabaratnam's attorney were not immediately returned Friday.

U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said the doctor masterminded a sophisticated scheme to cheat the government out of millions of dollars from about August 2004 to October 2007.

The investigation was sparked in 2006 as Los Angeles police looked into reports that hospitals were dumping homeless patients on Skid Row streets.

A $40 medical bill might seem small but a West Virginia man says his five-year battle over paying it was a matter of principle.

Sam Juniper says his health benefits weren't supposed to change after he retired in 2000 from M&G Polymers.

But he received a $40 bill in 2002 after the company's new provider, Aetna Insurance, refused to cover the cost of some blood work.

He challenged that in Mason County court in 2003 and won every decision all the way to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. The appeals court ruled in his favor on Oct. 10.

Lawyer Mark Underwood handled Juniper's case for free and says small bills like this add up over time.

Juniper says he is still waiting for his $40 refund check, which he plans to frame and hang on his wall.

The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that it no longer considers reliable a test for tar and nicotine used for more than 40 years and touted by the tobacco industry in marketing "light" and "low-tar" cigarettes.

The FTC said it may rescind its guidance on tar and nicotine yields that is based on that test. The commission said if the guidance is withdrawn, advertisers should no longer use terms suggesting FTC endorsement or approval of any specific test method.

The test, known as the Cambridge Filter Method, is a machine-based test that smokes cigarettes according to a standard procedure and is sometimes referred to as "the FTC method." The FTC issued its guidance in 1966 at a time when most public health officials believed reducing the amount of tar produced by a cigarette could reduce a smoker's risk of lung cancer. The commission believed that giving consumers uniform information about tar and nicotine yields of cigarettes would help them make informed decisions about the cigarettes they smoked.

But the FTC said Tuesday scientists now believe the test does not provide meaningful information on relative amounts of tar and nicotine people are likely to get from smoking different brands of cigarettes.

The main reason is that smokers often alter their behavior to get the necessary nicotine dosage, the FTC said. The techniques include taking larger and deeper puffs, smoking more and blocking the ventilation holes that may contribute to lower levels of tar and nicotine.

Nicotine acts as a stimulant and is one of the main factors contributing to the addictive quality of smoking. Tar is the residue from burning tobacco and one of the most destructive byproducts of smoking, accumulating in a smoker's lungs.

A federal appeals court has thrown out a $785,000 award to a woman who blamed her mother's cancer death on contamination from a wood treatment plant in Mississippi, one of hundreds of such cases against the facility's owner.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled Monday that the state's three-year statute of limitations barred Kenesha Barnes' claim against Koppers Inc. and Beazer East Inc.

After a three-week trial in 2006, a jury found the companies liable for negligently exposing Barnes' mother, Sherrie, to harmful chemicals from the Grenada plant, which treats railroad crossties and utility poles with creosote and other chemicals.

Sherrie Barnes, who lived next to the plant her entire life, died about a year after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 1997. More than five years elapsed between her diagnosis and the date in 2003 when Kenesha Barnes filed a wrongful death suit on her mother's behalf.

A three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit said the companies raised "troubling questions" about how the case was handled by U.S. District Judge W. Allen Pepper Jr., including his decisions on the admission of expert testimony.

The Bush administration is urging a federal appeals court to keep meatpackers from testing all their cattle for mad cow disease.

Government lawyers told a three-judge panel Friday they should reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy overseas customers.

The Agriculture Department currently tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease. It argues that more widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

Creekstone claims the Agriculture Department has no authority to prevent companies from using the test to reassure customers.

California may be losing its chance to set the U.S. agenda for providing health care to millions of uninsured because a bill backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger aiming to do just that is on its deathbed, state lawmakers said on Friday.

California's Republican governor has made medical insurance legislation a top priority and the bill before the state Senate, which votes on Monday, is a compromise crafted with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, the top lawmaker of the Democrat-led chamber.

But some senators say they have heard enough to vote no on the legislation, which would require all Californians to have health insurance, either through private providers or a subsidized state pool funded by taxes on cigarettes, hospitals and employers.

Millions lack medical insurance in the United States and California's efforts to provide it are being closely watched because it has has the largest state population and major political clout. In addition, the issue is front and center in a presidential election year when voters are anxious about rising health-care costs.

While the state Assembly was eager to advance the bill, the Democrat-led Senate is very much undecided.

"Once fully implemented, over 70 percent of California's 5.1 million uninsured, most of whom are low-income working individuals and their families, including 800,000 children, will no longer be uninsured for health care," according to a statement on the bill from Nunez's office.

Republicans in the Senate's minority fear the bill will require near- and long-term tax increases, while Democrats in the Senate are concerned the bill is too vague to make good on its goals and could cost far more than initial estimates.

Schwarzenegger's administration is hopeful those concerns can be overcome by Monday's vote.

"We're continuing to talk, continuing to work," said Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the governor. "This is a comprehensive plan that reflects hundreds of hours of work, if not thousands of hours, lots of compromise and feedback."

If the Senate approves the plan and Schwarzenegger signs it, voters would be asked to vote on it.

With a state budget deficit expected for the remainder of California's current fiscal year and the next year starting in July, California cannot afford an ambitious medical insurance experiment, said Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock.

A city program that provides health care to the uninsured and is partly funded by businesses can continue at least until a lawsuit challenging the program is resolved, a federal appeals court ruled.

A lower court in December struck down key provisions of the program, dubbed Healthy San Francisco, which requires companies with at least 20 workers to provide health coverage or pay the city a fee to help offset the program's estimated $200 million price tag.

The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a powerful lobby, sued the city, arguing that the mandatory contributions the city sought placed a costly burden on members already struggling to make a profit.

But a three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday it appeared the program would ultimately prevail.

"There may be better ways to provide health care than to require private employers to foot the bill," Judge William Fletcher wrote in a unanimous ruling. But he wrote that it wasn't up to the court to "evaluate the wisdom" of the plan, only its legality.

Fletcher wrote that the city and the labor unions that joined San Francisco in defending the lawsuit "have a probability, even a strong likelihood of success."

City officials hope the program, the first of its kind in the nation, will eventually cover about 80,000 people. Mayor Gavin Newsom said that nearly 8,000 people have already signed up and that the city hopes to enlist about 40,000 more people by the end of the year.

The "ruling is an important victory for uninsured San Franciscans," Newsom said Wednesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in December knocked out the business fee when he agreed with the restaurant owners and ruled that the program violated federal law.

A telephone message left Wednesday for an attorney representing the restaurant owners was not immediately returned.