According to Senator LeMieux of Florida, Florida is the health care fraud capital of the world and instead of reforming health care, the government should be focusing on fixing the current system, particularly targeting fraud waste and abuse.
Meanwhile, federal authorities are using South Florida as the testing site for the health care fraud initiatives given the prevalence of health care fraud in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. The Obama administration has asked for $300 million to combat health care fraud in 2010.
To view his speech on the Senate floor in this video.
To read more, click here.
Monthly Archives: November 2009
By The Time You Read This You May Have Already Committed Three Crimes
The growing issue of the number and vagueness of federal criminal statutes has led to a push back from even conservative groups, disdaining the over criminalization of federal law, leading one author to write a book arguing that each person likely commits up to three federal crimes a day.
The New York Times has now reported on the issue. The most recent flashpoint of this debate concerns 18 USC 1346 which defines a scheme or artifice to defraud to include a scheme to “deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” Justice Scalia himself has commented that law has been “invoked to impose criminal penalties upon a staggeringly broad swath of behavior, including misconduct not only by public officials and employees but also by private employees and corporate fiduciaries…”
Also touched upon is the growing list of federal crimes that do not require proof of intent to commit the crime, lessening the burden on prosecutors.
Click here to read the New York Times article.
South Florida Remains the Oxycontin Capital
The federal agents arrested 20 people for a Palm Beach operation that engaged in buying up oxycontin from Broward County pain clinics and pharmacies and shipping those drugs to Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina . The operation had been going on for several years, with participants visiting up to five pain clinics a day to obtain drugs.
To read more, click here.
FDA Targets Internet Pharmacy Websites
The FDA recently moved to shut down internet pharmacy “affiliate” websites in the United States . The Ryan Haight Act, passed in 2008 was the first effort to define the lawful and unlawful practice of telemedicine with respect to controlled substances and required all internet pharmacies to register with the DEA. In addition, many states have moved to restrict or prosecute physicians and pharmacies involved in the internet sales of non-controlled substances. As a consequence, there are fewer of such operations inside the United States and often prescription drugs being purchased online are done from pharmacies located outside the United States . However, the marketers for such pharmacies are often website owners and advertisers known as “affiliates” located inside the United States. Recently the FDA targeted websites operating inside the United States as marketers.
To read more, click here and here.
For more info about Buying Medicine and Medical Products over the Internet, click here.
W Administration Ignored Warning About Organized Crime Committing Medicare Fraud
Federal officials in charge of preventing fraud in the billion-dollar Medicare program ignored dozens of warnings of criminal activity during the Bush administration, according to investigations by the Associated Press and U.S. Senator Charles Grassley’s (R-IA) office.
CMS received about 30 tips over more than three-years reporting scams, but less than half of them got any attention. Organized crime groups have realized it is much easier and less dangerous to steal millions from the Medicare without as opposed to traditional criminal enterprises like prostitution, gambling or dope dealing.
Southern California is one that has been particularly hard hit area for Medicare fraud, where Russian, Armenian and Nigerian mafias are under investigation by federal agents. Konstantin Grigoryan, a former Soviet army colonel turned crime boss, recently pled guilty to taking $20 million from Medicare. Click here to watch a CNN report including undercover surveillance video.