Fraud and the $5 million wheelchair

By Tom Brown
Posted 23 October 2007 @ 08:09 pm EST

One Miami-area medical equipment supplier managed to bill the U.S. government so often for a wheelchair it ended up costing $5 million.

Last year south Florida accounted for 80 percent of the drugs billed across the entire United States for Medicare beneficiaries with HIV/AIDS, even though the region only had about one in 10 of eligible HIV/AIDS patients.

Fraud against Medicare, the federal health insurer for America’s 43 million elderly and disabled, has become so prevalent that it may rival the illegal drug trade as a crime of choice in a state long renowned for cocaine cartels, political shenanigans and swampland real estate scams.

In one case, said Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, a company had billed Medicare for millions of dollars worth of specially formulated asthma medication prepared at what the owner claimed to be his own local pharmacy.

“The person wasn’t a pharmacist, he was an air conditioner repairman. When we raided the so-called pharmacy where he mixed all these aerosols it was nothing more than a broom closet where all we found was a can of tar,” Acosta told Reuters.

Fraud targeting health-care programs for seniors is not unique to south Florida, where many elderly Americans have retired to end their days in the sunshine.

But the authorities say it’s become a huge and growing industry here.

“If you’re a criminal and your sole goal is to make money, health-care fraud looks increasingly attractive,” said Acosta.

“You can make several million dollars from health-care fraud and the penalties are much less severe than they are for narcotics trafficking,” he added.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees hundreds of billions of dollars in annual Medicare spending, reported last month that south Florida seemed to be playing an unusually large role in the provision of infusion drug therapy — medicines delivered intravenously outside a hospital or nursing home — to Medicare beneficiaries diagnosed with HIV or AIDS.

‘A SMALL DENT’

In the second half of last year just three counties — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach — accounted for half the total infusion drug therapy charges nationwide, and nearly 80 percent of the amount of drugs, billed across the entire United States for HIV/AIDS patients on Medicare, the report said.

It said the disparity was even greater before, most notably in the first half of 2005.

At the same time, only about 10 percent of national Medicare beneficiaries with HIV/AIDS lived in the three south Florida counties between July and December 2006.

There was no clinical explanation for the high level of billing in south Florida, according to the report.

In some cases, it said claims submitted by south Florida Medicare providers billing for HIV/AIDS services in the last half of 2006 totaled more than $1 million for each patient.

Local prosecutors have decided to go after the crooks.

Acosta said there was a dedicated team of about 60 people set up to combat Medicare fraud in south Florida, including about two-dozen FBI agents.

He added that his office was prosecuting about one in four health-care fraud cases nationally but complained that more resources were needed for prevention and enforcement.

His own budget for the fight totals less than $1 million per year, Acosta said.

“We could triple the number of cases prosecuted, yet again, but that’s only going to make a small dent,” he said.

Malcolm Sparrow, a fraud expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Management, said Florida had long been identified as “a hotbed of criminal entrepreneurship.”

Medicare fraud in the state, as elsewhere in the U.S. health-care system, is pervasive, he said, but the U.S. government needed to invest more time and money to discover its real extent.

“The rule with any white-collar crime is the well perpetrated cases are not detected. The ones we catch are the stupid, foolish and outrageous,” said Sparrow.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20071023/medicare-fraud.htm

Just pointing out that there needs to be some oversight even if it’s automated. Software could have caught that easily, but only if it’s in place.

It seems pretty obvious that there was some oversight, after all that’s how it got caught. The thing is not to make it such a bureaucracy that it delays troops from getting their parts and supplies. In my opinion, they should make the penalties for fraud higher, and not focus punishment on a single individual, I think everyone involved should face some legal consequences.

What evidence do you have that a ballistic missile has been shot down by an aircraft after reentry?

I poorly worded my statement, unfortunately it is misleading. None of the tests that I know of actually shot down a ballistic missile. What I should’ve said is they shot down simulated ballistic missile targets (I think some of the simulated targets were balloons). I think the targets were smaller than a ballistic missile.

I think they may have repeated the tests with a missile or some other target that was maneuvering.

Alcohol? Too much. Still have it in my system. Don’t move too fast, don’t put your head in strange positions. Too many drinks and way too loud music. Not enough sleep. And food was not enough. But the Ritz-Carlton here in town sure has a nice bar. In a town without real bars. Cold shower number 2 needed.

Sounds familiar.

Sounds like me when I was younger.

Reminds me of this song.

Dire Straits – Heavy Fuel

How many do you think she had?:eek:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3ae_1187267667

Supposedly the environmental system is cleared to 66000 feet, although they typically operate at 60,000 feet.

The pilots use pressure breathing.

It does not work that way!

Actually all modern era US fighters that I’m aware of have a pressure breathing system available to them. The oxygen control panel should have a switch that says normal and emergency; if you notice hypoxia symptoms or have a loss of pressurization loss you’re supposed to switch to emergency oxygen. The emergency oxygen position changes the ratio of oxygen and increases it to 100% it also raises the regulator pressure for pressure breathing.

I am under the impression that it is common practice on some aircraft to test the oxygen system and mask prior to takeoff by temporarily switching to emergency oxygen for a few seconds to insure that there is no leaks and that the mask is well seated. If the mask is not seated properly or if there are other leaks you wouldn’t feel the pressure.

I suspect that the F-22 might use a heavier duty mask and higher pressure regulator. I suspect it might automatically switch to pressure breathing/emergency oxygen if there is a loss of cabin pressure.

I would also hope that with the advanced computers and sensors that are on the F-22 that if there is a loss of cabin pressure that the plane would automatically descend and level off at a lower altitude. Perhaps that’s why it is certified/cleared to fly at higher altitudes.

The PAK-FA is a paper tiger.

I will make fun of the PAK-FA, till it enters service with combat units. It’s not that I disrespect the plane, manufacturersor the country, it’s that I disrespect the people that have bashed the F-22 for years claiming it was just a paper tiger, even after it was a proven prototype, even after it started production, even after production units were delivered and put into service for combat certification; blind nationalistic losers were still calling it a paper tiger, yet now the F-22 is master of the air. (So meanwhile the bragging rights go to the F-22, so I’m going to brag while I can) 😉

They still should be able to detect each other, the question is when and where and how well. That largely depends on the scenario and tactics. The F-117 was/is a great stealth plane, particularly for its day; however there was one shot down because poor tactics were used by the US, and the opponent used some smarts and an educated guess and good tactics.

It’s hard to compare them with each other since much of the information is secret, therefore the public figures are guesstimates and ballpark figures, some of which may be misinformation. 😉

Another reason it is difficult to compare them with each other that they are subject to design changes since they are so early in production or late design. So not only are the specifications not known by the engineers/manufacturers, they are subject to change (particularly the JSF & PAK-FA).

So debate as you suggested would be almost entirely moot.

Being able to detect something; is not necessarily the same thing as been able to identify, track, lock and attack. 😉

I wish that Congress would wake up and smell the coffee, the F-22 may be the best fighter there is today and there is very little threat to it at the moment; however with projects like PAK-FA that probably offer an increased threat, and could possibly be superior in some ways. Congress needs to wake up and smell the coffee and realize that we need more F-22s, and that we just cannot sit on our laurels with our advantage, we need to continue to advance the next generation of fighter. Congress needs to spend less money on pork projects like “midnight basketball” and more money on defense and real R&D.

I think there are a lot of things that the government funds that are called R&D that is a sham. Crazy wasteful government studies $26,000 to study how thoroughly Americans rinse their dishes.

Right now the biggest threat to the F-22 is Congress. Congress already has weakened the F-22, and have attempted to castrate it.

The exhaust plume of a jet engine is not ionised.

False. The “glowing flame” part of the afterburner exhaust is ionized. You need to learn about science, there are many forms of ionization such as heat of ionization, electrical ionization and chemical ionization.

You need to work on your basic physics understanding or and work on your English. You either don’t understand the physics or and are botching the translation.

The SR-71 was not a stealth aircraft.

You clearly don’t know what you are talking about, again. The SR-71/A-12/YF/12 was one of the first real practical stealth aircraft.

It may be not as stealthy as today’s aircraft, but in the aspect of radar stealth it was very stealthy. However on radar the shock wave (and exhaust plume) could be could be detected on radar hundreds of miles away when it was traveling at high speed. Even though it was stealthy on radar, the “footprints” could still be fairly easily seen when traveling at high speed. Though it really wasn’t the aircraft that was being detected it was the “footprints”.

It was not invisible to radar.

You need to work on your basic physics understanding or and work on your English. You either don’t understand the physics or and are botching the translation.

You seem to have the elementary school level understanding of stealth (that of the salesman, public-relations, salesman, media/news man, or politician).

Radar does not work on visible wavelengths; a fact that people with elementary school level understanding of stealth (that of the salesman, public-relations, salesman, media/news man, or politician) continually don’t understand and ignore.

Think more like a standard F-16 with RAM rather than F-117 Mk1 a.

Once again you seem to under estimate the stealth characteristics of the SR-71 because of your lack of aviation and physics knowledge. As djcross and others have pointed out to you this time and before, the SR-71 family was designed to incorporate some aspects of radar stealth from the beginning, where as the lesser F-16 was not designed to be stealthy, RAM on the F-16 was essentially an afterthought/stopgap measure.

China was reportedly tracking SR-71s from takeoff in Thailand to landing in Japan and passing that information to Vietnam.

Sounds like a confabulation or a deliberate attempt to mislead. Perhaps you’re just blinded by your propaganda. While the SR-71 would be very easy to detect on radar on takeoff, it would be virtually impossible to detect it on radar over the horizon on takeoff.

It is thought that the SR-71s takeoffs were monitored by spies, not with radar. You seem to be confusing the Eastern’s block claim that they could detect SR-71s takeoffs, with spies as being detected with radar. There is a big difference between detection on radar and they use of spies.

However once the SR-71 went supersonic, it’s “footprints” could probably be detected even by civilian weather radar from hundreds of miles away as long as the plane was above the horizon.

The problem for Vietnam was that even though it had precise information about where the SR-71 was it still didn’t have the SAMs or the planes to shoot the SR-71 down.

False. The SAMs and aircraft could have brought the SR-71 if they could have tracked the aircraft itself. They didn’t have the precise location where the SR-71 was at, so they were often shooting at the “footprint” which was often hundreds of feet if not miles behind the SR-71. As a result virtually all of the missiles that were fired at it exploded harmlessly miles behind it. They were often shooting at the “ghost” or “footprint” rather than the actual aircraft. Planes and missiles that were dispatched to intercept the aircraft usually ended up far behind the aircraft, and if they didn’t, the SR-71 pilot could simply throttle up and or vector, which was usually enough to run the missiles or enemy aircraft out of fuel.

They had the missiles to do it, and the planes they had could’ve been a possible threat if they could have directly detected the aircraft, or and used the proper tactics.

Since the airplane was stealth, the radar could not properly detect, track and lock on the SR-71 and since there was a poor use of tactics there never was a successful damage to the Blackbird family.

“On 31 Aug 1981 C. L. “Kelly” Johnson announced that the SR-71 (class) has had over 1000 missiles launches against it, but none successful” 😀
Source: http://www.voodoo.cz/sr71/timeline.html

i read somewhere that the exhaust plume(ionized gas) of the SR-71 had a very large RCS. Because of the large RCS, ample time would be given to the enemy to hide sensitive assets before SR-71 can overfly the intended targets. Airport civilian radars can detect the SR-71s at hundreds of miles away.
Is there any truth to this?:confused:

I think there is some truth to what you say, however I think the shock wave is more prominent then the exhaust plume on radar. However on infrared the exhaust plume would be easy to detect. When the SR-71 is traveling supersonic, the plane itself is hard to detect, however the footprint of the shock wave and exhaust plume can be detected from hundreds of miles away using civilian (traffic control and weather) radar and the possibly even the and exhaust plume on infrared.

This photograph (Shadowgraph) was shot by Harold Edgerton (aka Poppa flash) so the shock wave can be seen visibly. With a supersonic Blackbird very similar shock wave can be seen on radar, it typically displays as a “V” on conventional radar displays, however more advanced radars can display it as a 3-D cone.