Health Care Crime

Of all the ills of American health care, least visible is the pervasive fraud it encourages in everyone involved--doctors, patients, labs, hospitals and, most of all, the insurers who manage the mess.

One small symptom can be seen today in a New York Times report of 91 Medicare audits showing “widespread violations of patients’ rights and consumer protection standards” in private drug plans for the elderly that were supposed to save them money but, in some cases, are endangering their lives.

Slap-on-the-wrist fines totaling $770,000 on 11 companies won’t make a dent in the billions they are raking in from the most vulnerable Americans, who might have been helped by authorizing Medicare to bargain with pharmaceutical companies or allowing medications to be imported from Canada instead of devising new ways for insurance companies to fleece them.

Other clues about the enormity of health care fraud emerged this summer when the new Justice Department Medicare Fraud Strike Force announced measures to crack down on medical companies that send phony bills or provide excessive treatments, pointing to 2,400 investigations last year and warning that more cases were on the way.

The FBI, which estimates health-care stealing to total between $60 and $100 billion dollars a year, lists a few of the ways it’s done:

Hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, and other care providers submit fake bills for services never rendered--or overcharge for those delivered.

Service providers bill insurance for unnecessary and costly procedures.

Doctors sell prescriptions to patients for cash.

Companies charge insurance for expensive equipment but provide poor substitutes.

Crooked M.D.s entice patients to visit their offices for "free services" or gifts, then steal their personal information and use it to file fake claims.

If you have a strong stomach, you can Google “health care fraud” and get 23 million hits, many reporting convictions of providers across the country. But reading too many may make you sick and in need of medical attention.

From Medicine to Mass Murder

The aborted bombings in Britain raise the question of how men trained as healers could be converted to indiscriminate killers.

What political, ethnic and/or religious grievances would persuade them to turn from saving lives to taking them?

The British equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, as formulated by the General Medical Council, obligates physicians, among other duties, to:

“Make the care of your patient your first concern.

“Protect and promote the health of patients and the public.

“Never abuse your patients' trust in you or the public's trust in the profession.”

How do doctors and medical workers go from treating diseases and wounds to packing cars with gasoline, gas cylinders and nails to explode and kill or mutilate as many innocent human beings as possible?

How can they be transformed from serving a society to trying to destroy it and in the name of what sacred cause?

Even more horrific is the possibility that some or all came to Britain as sleepers with the intention of terrorism, multitudes of Manchurian Candidates waiting to strike.

Their ineptitude argues against that, but it certainly is possible.

In any case, the fact that they failed doesn’t erase the haunting questions. Whatever answers we get will tell us painful things about the human condition in the 21st century.