By Dan Christensen
FloridaBulldog.org
The company that provides health-care services to thousands of jail inmates across Florida, including Broward and Palm Beach counties, has been kicked out of New York for allegedly “placing inmates’ health in jeopardy.”
The entrance to the Humana headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.
Insurance giant Humana Inc., which operates some of the nation’s largest private Medicare health plans, knew for years of billing fraud at some South Florida clinics, but did little to curb the practice even though it could harm patients, a doctor alleges in a newly unsealed whistleblower lawsuit.
The suit was filed by Boynton Beach physician Mario M. Baez. It accuses Humana, and his former business partner, Dr. Isaac K. Thompson, of engaging in a lucrative billing fraud scheme that lasted years. The suit also names three other Palm Beach County doctors, two medical clinics and a doctors’ practice group as defendants. The suit was filed in October 2012, but remained under a federal court seal until Feb. 26.
By Dan Christensen
FloridaBulldog.org
The U.S. Justice Department settled a massive healthcare fraud case against Broward Health last month for millions of dollars less than the government lost as a result of the alleged fraud, records show.
By Dan Christensen
FloridaBulldog.org
Court documents describe the massive healthcare fraud that led Broward Health to pay $69.5 million to settle a whistleblower’s lawsuit last week as an illegal “scheme of mutual enrichment” between the hospital system and its physicians. Was it a criminal scheme?