The Justice Department announced charges against 24 people across the U.S., including doctors accused of writing bogus prescriptions.
Federal authorities said Tuesday they've broken up a $1.2 billion Medicare scam that peddled unneeded orthopedic braces to hundreds of thousands of seniors via foreign call centers.
Medicare's anti-fraud unit said it's taking action against 130 medical equipment companies implicated. They billed the program a total of $1.7 billion, of which more than $900 million was paid out. "The telemedicine we are talking about is basically a tele-scam," said Gary Cantrell, who oversees fraud investigations for the HHS inspector general's office."We are not talking about the use of advanced technology to provide better access to care."
The scam was detected last summer, officials said. Complaints from beneficiaries were pouring in to the Medicare fraud hotline, and some consumer news organizations warned seniors. As the investigation progressed, Cantrell said, federal agents gained cooperation from people familiar with the various schemes.
Health care fraud is a pervasive problem that costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year. The true extent of it is unknown, and some cases involve gray areas of complex payment policies.
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