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Are you equally as mad that there are people who walk away with 5 years in prison after performing 8-9 figures worth of unnecessary lab tests in order to bill M
by from 4y ago
Are you equally as mad that there are people who walk away with 5 years in prison after performing 8-9 figures worth of unnecessary lab tests in order to bill Medicare? Or physicians who get millions in kickbacks to prescribe expensive compounded drugs that might not even work? Holmes is a drop in the bucket of overall healthcare fraud (this kind of crime has a lot of recidivists) and is probably one of the less egregious cases.
- acdha 4y agoI do want them to face consequences, yes. Whether that’s jail time or financial ruination depends on harm - an extra test which doesn’t harm the patient is more waste than endangerment, and in this hypothetical case you also have the much harder question of proving intent. One of the other inequities of the American system is that white-collar crime usually requires you to prove not only that someone did something but also that they had criminal intention. Unless someone leaves documents showing they intended to bilk Medicare that is a tricky case of proving they didn’t reasonably want the data to rule out a possible diagnosis.