by D. Cupples | The fraudulent billing of us taxpayers for health care costs is so widespread that one might call it a sport.
Below are merely a few of the cases that the Justice Department mentioned just over the last week. They're small-timers, but it all adds up. And it all adds to our nation's staggering, aggregate health care expenditures.
The El Centro Regional Medical Center (Imperial County, California) agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle allegations that it defrauded Medicare. The Justice Department states:
"The government alleges that the 165-bed acute care hospital fraudulently inflated its charges to Medicare patients to obtain larger reimbursements from the federal health care program. The settlement covers claims submitted by the hospital for short inpatient admissions, usually of one day or less, when the services should have been billed on an outpatient “observation” basis or as emergency room visits."
Note that private contractors often try to settle False Claims Act cases because if a contractor is found guilty the contractor could be barred from getting future contracts.
Two New Orleans area doctors-- Dahlia Kirpatrick and Emmanuel Komandu pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health-care fraud. The Justice Department states:
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