Prescription for Profit - How Doctors Defraud Medicaid

1. Auflage 1993
ISBN: 978-0-520-07614-3
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 247 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 237 mm, Gewicht: 640 g

In this explosive exposé of our health care system, Paul Jesilow, Henry N. Pontell, and Gilbert Geis uncover the dark side of physician practice. Using interviews with doctors and federal, state, and private officials and extensive investigation of case files, they tell the stories of doctors who profit from abortions on women who aren't pregnant, of needless surgery, overcharging for services, and excessive testing.

How can doctors, recipients of a sacred trust and sworn to the Hippocratic Oath, violate Medicaid so egregiously? The authors trace patterns of abuse to the program's inauguration in the mid 1960s, when government authorities, not individual patients, were entrusted with responsibility for payments. Determining fees and regulating treatment also became the job of government agencies, thus limiting the doctors' traditional role. Physicians continue to disagree with Medicare and Medicaid policies that infringe on their autonomy and judgment.

The medical profession has not accepted the gravity or extent of some members' illegal behavior, and individual doctors continue to blame violations on subordinates and patients. In the meantime, program guidelines have grown more confusing, hamstringing efforts to detect, apprehend, and prosecute Medicaid defrauders. Failure to institute a coherent policy for fraud control in the medical benefit program has allowed self-serving and greedy practitioners to violate the law with impunity.

Prescription for Profit is a shocking revelation of abuse within a once-hallowed profession. It is a book that every doctor, and every patient, needs to read this year.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jesilow, Paul

Pontell, Henry N.

Geis, Gilbert

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Finanzsektor & Finanzdienstleistungen Versicherungswirtschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Gesundheitssystem, Gesundheitswesen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

1. Professional Entrepreneurs
2. Medicaid and Medicaid Fraud

3· The Law in Action: Enforcement in the Medicaid Program

4· What the Doctors Did

5· Doctors Tell Their Stories

6. Conclusions and Speculations

Notes

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Paul Jesilow is Assistant Professor, Henry N. Pontell is Professor, and Gilbert Geis is Professor Emeritus, all in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine.