Joy Pantoja
3/16/2015
Current event # 1
Medicare Fraud

Abstract: Current even will show a brief summary of Medicare fraud narrowed down in the ambulance industry.

Medicare fraud is being overused in the ambulance department. It is being investigated that ambulances are charging up to 1000 dollars for rides where the patients are able to walk, stand, sit, and even drive there selves to their appointments. One example in the story was of a passenger smoking a cigarette on the way to his dialysis appointment, as one of the Medicare schemes. Medicare payed over 5 million to ambulances alone last year over 314 million there budget. What prosecutors are noticing are there is an easy excess to get into the ambulance business “in the case of Penn Choice, Mudrova, a Russian immigrant with no medical training or advanced degree, was doing administrative work at a doctor’s office when she got a loan from her family to start the ambulance company, according to Kenny.”(Pettypiece,S.2014) Ambulance Company would sit outside dialysis centers recruiting patients who were able to take themselves to the dialysis appointments there selves, and as a result get a kickback from the company’s also. Penn Choice recruited ambulatory patients outside dialysis centers, telling them they could get Medicare to pay for rides. The company also acquired patients from another ambulance provider, Brotherly Love, which was closed by law enforcement in 2011 for billing Medicare for patients who could have safely been transported by other means and paying them kickbacks, according to Leahy. Brotherly Love sold names and addresses of its passengers to Penn Choice for $2,000 each, she said. The passengers were paid 100 to 400 in cash for their rides. The passengers are of people who are poor and easily able to get to work along with the scam. It was stated in the article one customer who was a