^

Quote :

"WASHINGTON – The owner and operator of a Florida pharmacy and Durable Medicare Equipment (DME) company has been sentenced to 151 months in prison for Medicare fraud, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of the Southern District of Florida announced today. Nelson Valdes was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga in Miami. Judge Altonaga also ordered Valdes to pay almost $3.5 million in restitution for the money he received in false claims. A federal jury in Miami convicted Valdes of conspiring to defraud Medicare, taking kickbacks and other related charges, after a five-day trial in July 2007. Valdes owned Florida Pharmacy and Discount and F & M Medical Rentals Inc. from March of 2000 to July 2007. In September of 2001, Valdes conspired with the owners of Med-Pro Billing and Unimed Pharmacy to refer paid patients in exchange for half of what Medicare paid for “compounded” aerosols. Compounding refers to the process of a pharmacist making medication as opposed to a pharmaceutical manufacturer. After Unimed Pharmacy was shut down in 2003 by the FBI, Valdes obtained a pharmacy license through the assistance of Benjamin Metsch, an attorney convicted of Medicare fraud in 2006, and continued to compound medication for his paid patients. From 2001 to 2003, Unimed collected $7 million for aerosols, and from 2000 to 2007, Valdes' pharmacy and DME company collected in excess of $3 million for aerosols and equipment. The compounding aerosol scheme was one of the most common health care frauds in south Florida. In 2006, the Medicare program paid for over $155 million worth of aerosol medications in Miami-Dade County, making it the single most common item billed to Medicare Part B. "

It looks like "licensed" pharamacists are still making medications in the back room...and defrauding the medicare system as well.


http://miami.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel07/mm20070927.htm

[Edited on October 20, 2008 at 10:31 PM. Reason : .]

10/20/2008 10:31:27 PM

what? compounding is a very legit thing. i don't know what you're implying, but not just anyone can become a pharmacist.

10/20/2008 10:35:20 PM

Yeah, there's a compounding pharmacist in Waverly Place in Cary. They were also the same pharmacy that caught hell when that NC State Student rubbed a custom anesthetic cream all over her body and checked out to that great laser hair removal center in the sky. There's a shitload of money in custom meds, doesn't surprise me that doctors/pharmacists/reps would all be looking for kickbacks from it.

I think we've established that licenses are useless without oversight. In many cases(not medicine, trades mostly), oversight alone would be sufficient.

10/20/2008 10:42:37 PM

^ I'd agree with that.

10/21/2008 10:36:25 AM

Let me go ahead and post a story about someone being murdered somewhere to prove that Police don't work.

10/21/2008 4:55:29 PM

Quote :

"Let me go ahead and post a story about someone being murdered somewhere to prove that Police don't work."

10/21/2008 5:00:33 PM