Medicare Fraud Becomes Election Issue

As seen in the Amherst Times from this press release Of course, we have run many stories about the problem of psychiatrists and their involvement with medicare fraud. Psychiatry has an ongoing problem addressing the problem of crime within their own ranks..

Jeanine Pirro, candidate for Attorney General, today criticized her opponent Andrew Cuomo’s statement to Crain’s editorial board that he favored granting amnesty to Medicaid cheats, allowing them to evade criminal prosecution for stealing public funds by giving the stolen money back.

“No experienced prosecutor would ever think that the solution to Medicaid fraud is to make stealing from the Medicaid system risk-free,” Pirro said. “You want to stop the fraud? Start putting Medicaid cheats in jail. Give the crime real consequences. Wake people up to the fact that defrauding the Medicaid system will end very badly for them.”

Pirro has been a vocal advocate for treating Medicaid cheats like the criminals they are.  An article she authored – The Crime of Medicaid Fraud – appears on her website: www.jeaninepirro.com.

“Andrew Cuomo wants the title of Attorney General, but doesn’t want the job,” Pirro said. “The Attorney General’s responsibility to our Medicaid system is to investigate and prosecute cases of criminal fraud. I know how to conduct fraud investigations and prosecutions; I’ve done them. If Andrew doesn’t, then he should step aside – not try to hide his inexperience with short-sighted proposals like amnesty.”

Pirro extolled her record in this area:

* In 2005, as District Attorney of Westchester, Pirro took down a $12 million medical mill and indicted 34 defendants – doctors, ambulance drivers, public employees – a massive enterprise designed to bilk the medical insurance system.


* In 2005, Pirro shut down pharmacies that were telling insurance companies they were dispensing large quantities of expensive drugs, while giving patients smaller amounts of cheaper drugs – fraudulent claims totaling some $4 million.


* Pirro also convicted the operator of two storefront heath-care businesses for making $160,000 worth of fraudulent medical claims to the State of New York (as well as the government clerk he bribed to process these claims, knowing they were false).


* Pirro investigated, prosecuted and convicted a psychologist who billed insurance companies for a thousand treatment sessions that had never occurred.


“All New Yorkers pay for Medicaid fraud through their property taxes,” Pirro said.

“New York desperately needs an Attorney General who won’t shirk from the responsibility of battling these cheats aggressively and effectively.”