Federal authorities say 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.
In this photo provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, HHS Office of Inspector General agents, and other law enforcement officers, take part in arrests Tuesday, April 9, 2019, in Queens, N.Y., as they break up a billion-dollar Medicare scam that peddled unneeded orthopedic braces to hundreds of thousands of seniors nationwide, using a network of foreign call centers.
The Health and Human Services inspector general’s office said the fast-moving scam morphed into multiple related schemes, fueled by kickbacks among the parties involved. The FBI and 17 U.S. attorney’s offices took part in the crackdown. Arrests were made Tuesday morning. The call centers would verify seniors’ Medicare coverage and transfer them to telemedicine companies for consultations with doctors.
The call centers would collect prescriptions and sell them to medical equipment companies, which would ship the braces to beneficiaries and bill Medicare. Medical equipment companies would get $500 to $900 per brace from Medicare and would pay kickbacks of nearly $300 per brace. Health care 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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