Ten Indicted for Healthcare Kickbacks

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/ten-indicted-healthcare-kickbacks

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Northern District of Texas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Ten Indicted for Healthcare Kickbacks

Ten people, including two medical doctors, have been indicted in a $300 million healthcare fraud, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad E. Meacham.
(snip)

According to the indictment, the founders of several lab companies, including Unified Laboratory Services, Spectrum Diagnostic Laboratory, and Reliable Labs LLC, allegedly paid kickbacks to induce medical professionals to order medically unnecessary lab tests, which they then billed to Medicare and other federal healthcare programs.

The medical professionals -- including internal medicine specialist Eduardo Canova, family medicine practitioner Jose Maldonado, and nurse practitioner Keith Wichinski – allegedly accepted the bribes and ordered millions of dollars’ worth of tests.

Meanwhile, Unified, Spectrum, and Reliable disguised the kickbacks as legitimate business transactions, including as medical advisor agreement payments, salary offsets, lease payments, and marketing commissions.
(snip)

As a result of these kickbacks, laboratories controlled by the defendants were able to submit more than $300 million in billing to federal government healthcare programs. Between 2015 and 2018, Dr. Maldonado alone received more than $400,000 in kickbacks for ordering more than $4 million worth of lab tests and Dr. Canova received more than $300,000 in kickbacks for ordering more than $12 million worth of lab tests.
(snip)

[orwell]

1. THE GREATEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD!

All hail the "free market."

[Hoyt]

2. Unfortunately, this scheme involves Medicare. Private Insurers prevent this

kind of fraud by requiring docs to use a few approved labs. Government programs, especially Medicare, make this kind of fraud easy under their system. It usually takes years to catch the crooks.

We need Medicare-for-All. But we better be prepared to take tough actions to avoid this junk.