DOJ charges more than 400 people with healthcare fraud

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged more than 400 people, including 56 doctors, with healthcare fraud that cost taxpayers approximately $1.3 billion, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Thursday.

“Too many trusted medical professionals like doctors, nurses and pharmacists have chosen to violate their oaths and put greed ahead of their patients,” Sessions told reporters in Washington, D.C. “Amazingly, some have made their practices into multimillion dollar criminal enterprises. They seem oblivious to the disastrous consequences of their greed.”

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More than 100 of the 416 defendants are charged with opioid scams in the largest such fraud crackdown in U.S history, he said.

He added that 295 healthcare providers are being suspended or banned from federal health programs as a result of the crackdown. 

Six doctors, for example, are accused of prescribing unnecessary opioids in Michigan and billing Medicare for $164 million in false or fraudulent claims, Sessions said. Some of the prescribed drugs were sold illegally on the street.

Another fraudulent rehabilitation facility in Florida allegedly billed the government for $58 million for false tests and treatments, he added. That same facility is accused of luring addicts with gift cards, strip club visits and drugs.