“It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.” - Sir William Osler






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Sutton's Law Strikes Again


"Go where the money is," said Willie Sutton, famous bank robber. So they did:

A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.

Now tell me again why single payer health programs are a good idea. We're talking about what, a seventh of the U.S. economy? That's a hell of a lot of money. And where there is money there will be fraud.

The defendants...had stolen the identities of doctors and set up 118 phantom clinics in 25 states, authorities said.

Here's my favorite part:

Prosecutors said the phony paperwork showed eye doctors doing bladder tests; ear, nose and throat specialists performing pregnancy ultrasounds; and obstetricians testing for skin allergies.

Dudes didn't even try to make it look kosher. How did they ever get this far? Blatantly phony medical bills being sent in from 25 states and 118 clinics? Why weren't they caught after five, or ten, or 25 clinics were set up? Answer: because Medicare is a gigantic operation and a great deal of its employees know virtually nothing about medicine. They don't know enough to realize that an ophthalmologist doing bladder tests is unheard of. Now if the program gets even bigger, just imagine how ripe for fraud it will be.

On second thought, don't. I don't want to be responsible for your high blood pressure.

Labels: Medicine, Money, Politics

posted by Dr. Alice at #