Federal authorities said 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.
An agent with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general's office takes part in arrests Tuesday in Queens, N.Y., related to a Medicare scheme.
Telemarketers would reach out to seniors offering “free” orthopedic braces, also touted through television and radio ads. Beneficiaries who expressed interest would be patched through to call centers involved in the scheme. Officials described an “international telemarketing network” with call centers in the Philippines and throughout Latin America.
The doctors would write prescriptions for orthopedic braces, regardless of whether the patients needed them, officials said. In some cases, several braces were prescribed for the same patient. Healthcare 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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