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Phantom Billing, Fake Prescriptions, and the High Cost of Medicine: Health Care Fraud and What to Do about It

Online ISBN:
9780801460807
Print ISBN:
9780801449796
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

Phantom Billing, Fake Prescriptions, and the High Cost of Medicine: Health Care Fraud and What to Do about It

Terry L. Leap
Terry L. Leap
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
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Published online:
18 August 2016
Published in print:
17 March 2011
Online ISBN:
9780801460807
Print ISBN:
9780801449796
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

U.S. health care is a $2.5 trillion system that accounts for more than 17 percent of the nation's GDP. It is also highly susceptible to fraud. Estimates vary, but some observers believe that as much as 10 percent of all medical billing involves some type of fraud. In 2009, New York's Medicaid fraud office recovered $283 million and obtained 148 criminal convictions. In July 2010, the U.S. Justice Department charged nearly 100 patients, doctors, and health care executives in five states of billing the Medicare system out of more than $251 million through false claims for services that were medically unnecessary or never provided. These cases only hint at the scope of the problem. This book takes on medical fraud and its economic, psychological, and social costs. With dozens of cases, the book covers a wide variety of crimes: kickbacks, illicit referrals, overcharging and double billing, upcoding, unbundling, rent-a-patient and pill-mill schemes, insurance scams, short-pilling, off-label marketing of pharmaceuticals, and rebate fraud, as well as criminal acts that enable this fraud (mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering). After assessing the effectiveness of the federal laws designed to fight health care fraud and abuse—the anti-kickback statute, the Stark Law, the False Claims Act, HIPAA, and the food and drug laws—the book suggests a number of ways that health care providers, consumers, insurers, and federal and state officials can bring health care fraud and abuse under control, thereby reducing the overall cost of medical care in America.

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