Quote:US charging 412 in health fraud schemes worth $1.3 billion.
'More than 400 people have been charged with taking part in health care fraud and opioid scams that
totaled $1.3 billion in false billing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday.
Sessions called the collective action the "largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history"
and said it indicates that some doctors, nurses and pharmacists "have chosen to violate their oaths and
put greed ahead of their patients."
Among those charged are six Michigan doctors accused of a scheme to prescribe unnecessary opioids.
A Florida rehab facility is alleged to have recruited addicts with gift cards and visits to strip clubs, leading
to $58 million in false treatments and tests.
Officials said those charged in the schemes include more than 120 people involved in illegally prescribing
and distributing narcotic painkillers. Such prescription opioids are behind the deadliest drug overdose
epidemic in U.S. history. More than 52,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2015 -a record - and experts
believe the numbers have continued to rise.
"In some cases, we had addicts packed into standing-room-only waiting rooms waiting for these prescriptions,"
acting FBI director Andrew McCabe said. "They are a death sentence, plain and simple."
Nearly 300 health care providers are being suspended or banned from participating in federal health care
programs, Sessions said.
"They seem oblivious to the disastrous consequences of their greed. Their actions not only enrich themselves,
often at the expense of taxpayers, but also feed addictions and cause addictions to start," Sessions said.
Health care fraud sweeps like Thursday's happen each year across the country, but law enforcement officials
continue to grapple over the best way to fight the problem.
The people charged were illegally billing Medicare, Medicaid and the health insurance program that serves
members of the armed forces, retired service members and their families, the Justice Department said.
The allegations include claims that those charged billed the programs for unnecessary drugs that were
never purchased or given to the patients...'
SOURCE:
Holy Cow!! This will send a shudder through the halls of Washington DC!!
Think about what structure you'd have to have in place to make sure this can happen.
Making sure leaks were stifled, managing questions about clusters of deaths... I would say it's
no wonder that this many people were involved, but thinking about it, I'd guess that there are
others who avoided the long-arm of the law.
It seems there are many swamps to drain!
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.