Medical fraud

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Outrage! Preschoolers used as guinea pigs in psychotropic drug tests Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

It's just plain medical fraud. Yet the whole of conventional medicine goes along with it, pretending that nothing is amiss. Doctors, hospitals, FDA bureaucrats, teachers and even many parents just pretend that all these mysterious brain chemistry diseases have spontaneously appeared in the world over the last ten years, suddenly afflicting tens of millions of children. And thank goodness the drug companies just happened to have invented all these treatment drugs at the exact same moment in history when these psychiatric diseases became so widespread! Imagine the odds...

States sue the federal government over the Bush drug benefit program (commentary) Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

First, we have the issue that hardly any of these prescription drugs are helping people in the first place, so the whole basis of this "benefit" is medical fraud to begin with. On top of that, we have the drug monopoly system in full swing, where the FDA and Big Pharma attempt to discredit (or outlaw) anything that competes with the price-controlled U.S. drug market, thereby forcing U.S. states to overpay for drugs by as much as 10,000%. So even when states are getting reimbursed by the feds for these drugs, they're still being purchased at rip-off prices.

When Healing Becomes A Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies Kenny Ausubel See book keywords and concepts

Fishbein staked his highly public image on exposing medical fraud. While still assistant editor to Dr. Simmons, he had established his quackbusting persona with a frothy episode printed in virtually every paper in the country. When a young woman reported an impossible fever of 119 degrees, Fishbein traveled to Michigan to expose the "Hot Girl of Escanaba." He discovered Dr. Fishbein proves the pen is mightier than the scalpel by exposing medical fraud.

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill Robert Whitaker See book keywords and concepts

That whole spiel is a form of medical fraud, and it is impossible to imagine any other group of patients—ill, say, with cancer or cardiovascular disease—being deceived in this way. In truth, the prevailing view in American psychiatry today is that there are any number of factors—biological and environmental— that can lead to schizophrenia. A person's genetic makeup obviously may play a role.

The Medical Racket Martin L. Cross See book keywords and concepts

Surgery is still too often unnecessary. medical fraud, always a small problem, has become near epidemic. American hospitals are adrift, struggling against empty beds, fierce competition, and massive confusion. Chilling New Crisis American medicine today is in an economic, personal, and governmental crisis. Factors other than good health care— increasing control by insurers, the conflict between science and profit—are all working against the goal of ideal medicine. In many ways, as we shall see, medicine is moving backward rather than forward even as new scientific advances are made daily.

The operating law in prosecuting medical fraud is the False Claims Act. First passed during the Civil War, it rewarded whistle-blowers when they reported shoddy or nonexistent work by wartime profiteers. The award was a piece of the money recovered when the thieves were caught. This obscure piece of legislation has now been reborn. It was amended in 1986, and fines of $10,000 and triple damages for each false claim were levied. This has resulted in a tenfold increase in fraud reporting just since 1992.

Hospital and other medical fraud is being increasingly uncovered (though only a small portion of the whole) because some people are either public-spirited or anxious to make a buck, or both. The result has been the emergence of whistle-blowers under a federal fraud tip-and-reward system set up by the Inspector General's Office.

In the nineteen years since it was founded, there have been over seven thousand convictions of medical fraud operators, which, unfortunately, represents only a small segment of the rip-off artists. Started because of the nursing home fraud, it has now branched out to cover the whole Medicaid industry. The first crackdown came in the early 1980s when the market price of silver reached its height of fifty dollars an ounce. Immediately, X-ray photographic film became a hot item on the black market.

But most of the medical fraud in America does not involve foreigners. In the main, it is expertly handled by domestic medical crooks. In New York, a physician ran an ingenious Medicaid scam. He purchased three medical test labs, then hired scouts to go out into the poor neighborhoods to offer people ten dollars for each vial of their own blood. The "scouts" were told to get as many vials as possible. Then, using the patients' Medicaid numbers, the doctor performed numerous lab tests on each "street blood" sample, charging the government as much as $2,000 per.

A good estimate is that less than ten percent of the medical fraud is currently being uncovered. T 7T The medical profession, which has not touched come involved. This must go beyond lectures on ethics, to true disciplinary action. The AMA should set up its own enforcement unit, and have doctors call in with their suspicions of other doctors, which in turn should be relayed to government enforcement people. At present, some doctors are gaining a reputation for being less than honest, which in the long run rubs off on all members of the profession.

20 Years of Censored News Carl Jensen See book keywords and concepts

Ominously, the article concluded, "Those concerns still linger." 8. medical fraud Costs the Nation $100 Billion Annually—Or More 1995 SYNOPSIS: The United States' $1 trillion annual health bill is 14 percent of the gross domestic product, making the medical industry the largest business in the land. Of this sum, a staggering amount is stolen.

UPDATE: Despite the skyrocketing costs of medical care, medical fraud continues unabated. The Philadelphia Business Journal (4/19/96) reported that the General Accounting Office estimates medical billing fraud and abuse diverts around ten percent of the estimated $1 trillion in health-care payments made annually in the United States, or about $100 billion a year.

When Healing Becomes A Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies Kenny Ausubel See book keywords and concepts

Fishbein proves the pen is mightier than the scalpel by exposing medical fraud. two hot water bottles under her arms, and generated prodigious national heat of his own in 10,000 newspaper clippings, as well as a merry mention in the Ziegfeld Follies.38 Fishbein's early success combating quackery revealed to him a gold mine of limitless possibilities. In rapid-fire succession he cranked out three books: Fads and Quackery, Medical Follies, and The New Medical Follies.

That his own medical credentials were a fiction buried a painful hypocrisy under the inflammatory tenor he brought to eradicating medical fraud that would fracture medicine for the rest of the century. Both men desperately wanted fame and recognition, and each got it in his own way. They became masters of publicity, and perfected their respective schtick.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.