Feds charge 601 people in health care fraud, opioid crackdown

Sun Sentinel ^ | June 28, 2018 | Linda Trischitta

[BlackAdderess]

Federal authorities have charged 601 people across the country, including 124 in South Florida, in what they called the largest crackdown in history on health care fraud.

South Florida retains its notorious ranking of two decades as a leading region for such cases. Prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida filed charges against 20 percent of the total defendants announced and said they were responsible for $337 million in false billings.

“The numbers are really staggering,” Benjamin Greenberg, U.S. attorney for the southern district of Florida said Thursday at a Miami press conference.

Nationwide, various schemes involved $2 billion in losses because of fraud. Among those facing prosecution were 76 doctors, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

[txrefugee]

Florida: Land of Fraudulent Doctors
….and it’s our tax dollars they are stealing by the billions.

[bert]

We learned of the Broward county corruption when the powers that be allowed and even encouraged a criminal to enter a school and murder students.

God only knows how the opiod profits are kicked back to Broward democrat politicos in that cancer on American society

[PGR88]

Fed.gov creates massive economic incentives to commit crime, with free money - and are shocked when people commit those crimes

[Lurker]

$337,000,000 in just one State.

Incredible.

Fair trials.

Then Life in prison. None of this concurrent sentencing garbage.

L

[rrrod]

Broward sets the standard for corruption. Normal folks cannot even imagine the level of corruption.

[TexasM1A]

601 people huh?, just a single drop of water in the ocean.

[Delta 21]

So, the whole “Opioid Crisis” is nothing more than professional health care workers stealing money from the govt while they take advantage of people seeking health care.
Imagine that.

[AppyPappy]

Medicaid Expansion strikes again.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

I used to work with one of the physicians that were arrested and charged. A very pleasant person to deal with, but he had serious trouble maintaining his credentials. He ended up opening a clinic where evidently he did nothing but write prescriptions for opioids, 250,000 of them in just over two years.

I have a suspicion that this is par for the course amongst "affirmative action" doctors who but for preferential treatment in medical school placement and advancement would never qualify on the basis of intelligence and ability.

[PGalt]

HOORAY FEDS!

[BeauBo]

More Democrat donors distracted from the midterms.

This is like the Obama Administration targeting Republican donor car dealerships - only legal.

[hoosiermama]

This was announced on the Louisville radio with the number of Kentucky doctors mentioned. My first question: was Rand Paul’s neighbor among them? Haven’t found the answer yet but it would fit the rumors that were out when he attacked the Senator.

[Rusty0604]

Affirmative action should not be allowed in the medical field.

[MichaelCorleone]

“So, the whole “Opioid Crisis” is nothing more than professional health care workers stealing money from the govt while they take advantage of people seeking health care.”

Well said.

[rlmorel]

Yeah. Nobody uses those drugs illegally or recreationally.

This is all just physicians preying on poor people who have had legitimate medical procedures, and they over-prescribe to them so they can send their kids to fancy colleges.

[MichaelCorleone]

I’m not in the medical field myself, but don’t doctors take the following pledge right from graduation from medical school: ‘First, do no harm’?

Scary stuff.

[rlmorel]

Well, they are even trying to get the Hippocratic Oath eradicated.

Point is, you never see this in hospitals, they are too structured with too much oversight (too many eyes) and they have constant training for physicians they have to sign off on regarding dosing for pain, etc...more of a corporate environment.

In a private physician office setting, it is different. IMO, that is where the real fraud goes on.

As I am wont to say, “50% of the doctors graduate in the lower half of their class.”

(granted, where they graduate is not always an indicator of how good a doctor someone might might make, but it is a proxy. There are doctors who were not accomplished in school but become very good because they are tuned in with their patients, and others who graduate high from an ivy league school who aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.)