The Story:
A federal grand jury recently indicted two Louisiana men for conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. One of the men owned and the other operated a medical supplies and billing company. The specifics of the charges are illustrative of the problem of fraud in the healthcare market, specifically in the workers’ comp system. in the United States today.
Some Specifics:
The two men (Hunter Matthew Burroughs and Stephen Keith Andrews) along with other individuals associated with their company recruited doctors to sell their pain creams and patches by offering them a split of the profits collected from billing insurers in connection with federal and private workers compensation schemes.
The company billed insurers at markups of between anywhere from 15 to 20 times the cost of the medications, and paid the doctors involved their illegal kickbacks. The company’s former billing director, Amanda Dawn Rains, admitted to guilt in this conspiracy in October 2021.
In Pill Form:
Burroughs and Andrews are innocent until proven guilty. But the problem that this indictment speaks of is certainly real. According to data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, fraud on workers’ comp systems costs businesses in the United States about $30 billion each year.
