Jacksonville Criminal Lawyer Blog
After President Obama was elected, he promised to make Medicare fraud a priority with the Department of Justice. It has been well publicized that the government suspected there was a tremendous amount of fraud with the Medicare process. The government alleged that medical providers all over the country were committing Medicare fraud by requesting reimbursements for services and/or medical equipment that were never provided to patients or were unnecessary and by other methods. Since the Medicare Strike Force was created to address this issue, the government has charged almost 1500 people involved in Medicare fraud in an amount close to $4.8 billion, according to the government.
More recently, the government announced the arrests of 91 people in seven different cities for Medicare fraud. Like many of these large Medicare fraud cases, the people arrested included doctors, nurses, owners of medical practices and other medical personnel. In this recent case, the government alleged that approximately $430 million in Medicare reimbursements were fraudulently billed to the government.
The cost of Medicare and Medicare reform are two issues that are constantly in the news these days. When that is the case, you can expect law enforcement officials to shift their focus to crimes involving those issues. In this case, the United States government is clearly continuing to focus on situations where they believe Medicare fraud is taking place.