Category: Medicare

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Unlawful Kickbacks For Drug Prescriptions Alleged Luxury Goods, A New Car, And Cash Allegedly Used As Bribes Expensive Medications Neither Necessary Nor Dispensed Kickbacks for medical services and medications are against the law.  Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b. When the underlying services or drugs are paid for […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Department of Justice Expands Investigation Lead By Whistleblower Allegations of Large-Scale Medicare Fraud The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently expanded its investigation of the Medicare Advantage Plan thanks to the efforts of a Medicare whistleblower. The whistleblower case (also known as a qui tam) began as an investigation […]

A Pill That Is Tough To Stomach: Healthcare Fraud Health Care Fraud In a recent year, the country spent $2.27 trillion on healthcare. In that same year, more than four billion health care claims were filed to insurance companies, some of which were, as expected, fraudulent. And while the sheer […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER A $125 Million Settlement Put Skilled Nursing Facilities on Notice A Qui Tam Lawsuit against the Kindred/RehabCare Nursing home company has just settled for $125 million, according to the law firm that handled the case. The claims, levied under the False Claims Act, were that nursing homes owned […]

Hospital in California Allegedly Involved in a Healthcare Fraud Including Kickbacks, Justice Claims $600 Million in Return ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER In California, the Pacific Hospital is involved in a healthcare fraud case with an alleged $600 million in falsified billing in an eight-year period. The scheme was allegedly created by the […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER The IRS Whistleblower Reward Increased in Fiscal 2016 The IRS announced that rewards paid to whistleblowers from October 1st, 2015 to September 30, 2016 will have a 6.8 percent deduction. There is a similar deduction from the award every year, typically taken to pay outstanding government debts, and […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Healthcare fraud is often a fairly technical area of law: large companies misusing funds, fraudulently billing Medicare or Medi-Cal, or improperly treating patients not in need of expensive procedures. Cases often revolve around class disputes, the finer points of qui tam law and the false claims act, or […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER In the wake of Governor Jerry Brown’s signing of the End of Life Option Act, California has become the sixth state in the US to allow physician assisted suicide. While the bill offers those in excruciating pain or discomfort the agency to end their own lives, some disability […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER If you’ve ever seen an advertisement for free lunch seminars on living trusts, or for the astoundingly low cost to set one up, you may be thinking it’s too good to be true. Well, you’re right. It’s probably a lure for a living trust mill. It has long […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER The Nursing Home Reform Law prohibits discrimination based on a person’s Medicaid status or eligibility. Medicaid rates, however, are often much lower than those paid by Medicare and private insurance residents, which can lead to residents being treated as second-class citizens in a nursing home. Approximately two-thirds of […]