Posted on 03/29/2010 2:14:40 PM PDT by decimon
Dentists are using hawkers on the streets of Harlem to lure Medicaid cardholders to their clinics with promises of cash, The Post has learned.
The practice is illegal and often a sign of fraud, according to the New York State Office of the Medicaid Inspector General, which oversees the state's cash-strapped public insurance fund.
The hawkers unwittingly gave two Post reporters an inside peek at their operations.
"Dentist, dentist, dentist! Get paid $20 to $40! Medicaid!" barked Victor Sotille on the corner of 123rd Street and Lexington Avenue on Friday.
Sotille told a Post reporter that if he has a Medicaid card, he'll receive $20 cash if he sits for a dental cleaning and $40 for partial denture work.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
>>”I never said anything about money, boss!” Sotille said. “I said you get a free toothbrush worth $20.”
lol!
Does any idiot that happens to turn 65 while living in this country get medicaid? Or is it limited to citizens who actually paid into it?
That's Medicare.
Medicaid/medicare. Stuff I’m paying for and not getting.
Man, what does a dentist get paid on a MediCaid patient in New York?
This seems like a tough way to do Medicaid fraud. Medicaid pays very little for a cleaning (I believe in WI it’s $16). You would really have to crank them through.
It is DME (durable medical equipment) fraud that is much more lucrative. There are some brazen schemers in Miami which involve outright identity theft. I have had a DME salesperson call my office after having called one of my patients (I do not know how they got her number) and requesting that I fill out paperwork for a scooter.
Wait until we have (God forbid) amnesty or illegal alien coverage. I predict we could have a scheme where a recruiter entices illegals to go to the doctor for a piece of DME. The recruiter would have a DME licence to sell to the patient and collect the fee from Medicare. The doctor gets a patient and maybe a kickback, the recruiter/supplier get the Medicaid/Medicare DME fee and patient gets the DME which can be resold to the supplier. The doctor cannot be the DME supplier because of the Stark law. This also works for narcotics but does entail more risk.
SOME doctors in Memphis do the say thing, send buses for them, eye doc, OB/GYN for starters. They see the same kids several times a year.
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