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Firm Started By Gaetz Accused Of Medicare Fraud
May 10, 2013
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing the hospice company founded by Senate President Don Gaetz, accusing it of Medicare fraud, going back to when Gaetz was still with the firm.
The lawsuit, filed May 2 in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City and reported Thursday by the Miami Herald, alleges that Vitas Hospice Services and Vitas Healthcare Corp. have misspent millions in taxpayer money collected from Medicare.
Gaetz, R-Niceville, sold the company in 2004 to current owner Chemed and no longer has any interest in the firm. But the suit alleges Chemed’s Vitas Health unit billed Medicare for services it didn’t provide since 2002. The suit alleges that “since at least 2002, Vitas, and since at least 2004 Chemed (after acquiring Vitas),submitted or caused the submission of false claims to the Medicare program by both: (a) billing Medicare for more costly crisis care services when certain patients did not need crisis care services or when Vitas, in fact, did not provide such services, or Vitas provided inappropriate medical care, and (b) admitting certain patients who were not eligible to receive hospice services (instead of curative care), because the patients did not have a life expectancy of six months or less if their illnesses ran their normal course,” the complaint says.
A spokeswoman for Gaetz told the Herald that the complaint involved matters “long after” he left the company. The company also vows to fight the suit.
By The News Service of Florida
Comments
9 Responses to “Firm Started By Gaetz Accused Of Medicare Fraud”
Let’s not forget that there are people, who probably were benefitting from the hospice care and services. People at the end of their lives…
Medicare needs to loosen the guidelines for the hospice medicare benefit. Prognostication is far from an exact science…
Also compare:
$1000 / day for Hospice Crisis Care vs. $3500/ day for In Patient ED / ICU Hospital care. Neither hastens death or prolongs life. Both palliate symptoms
Just sayin…
Let’s not be too hasty to judge here – read the allegations again. Who is making the determination that these patients didn’t need crisis care? Was it the doctor on site, or a desk jockey at the medicare contractor administration office? Who determined the patient’s life expectancy, and when was that determination made? Was it after the patient surprised everyone and lived longer than the 6 months? Hindsight is 20/20, and most nursing homes are doing their level best to help these patients with care and help their families cope. I’m not defending Mr. Gaetz, but if the allegations were more sinister, such as double billing, billing for patient care after the patient was deceased, I think we could see it more clearly. These are charges based upon judgement, and we don’t know whose judgement they are based upon.
In my travels working around the world, i learned one thing for sure. You can always tell who is far left and who is far right. All you need to do is watch a person. A person who is far left picks up a paper he goes right to the funny paper to get his news where as a far right person starts on the front page and he does not have to told what to say are how to walk and where to be and tries to listen to both sides of the news and then make up your mine on the truth.
@ Not You & Walnut Hill Roy
I found it interesting that during the Clinton impeachment trials that there were reports that Ken Starr (married) was involved in a long term affair with his secretary yet the amount of coverage that got was very limited. He dragged out the trial and cost us taxpayers all those millions for what most people thought “So what?”.
Hear on today’s news that “the White House” has changed the wording of official reports concerning the attack on the US Embassy in Libya to remove “terror” from them. Methinks that some terrorists are in high positions of our own government.
What is it with Republicans and Medicare fraud? First Gov. Voldemort, now Don Gaetz. I wonder if he’ll break Rick Scott’s record for taking the 5th (75 times).
@Walnut Hill Roy: Just like the $70 million spent by Kenneth Starr and the Republicans to discover that the “scandals” surrounding Presdient Clinton and his staff were unfounded.
Let me guess, Gaetz is a Republican. This administration in Washington will not fail to leave a single Republican in power alone. What’s worse is that they are using an unlimited supply of taxpayer and borrowed money to file the suits even if they are sure going in that they will lose. The tough part is that people who pay their own bills can go bankrupt fighting the lawsuits even if they win. Maybe this country used to be the land of the free, but it’s certainly not now!
The one law that England has that I would love to see here is that if you file a lawsuit and lose, you pay the winner’s legal fees. There would be a lot fewer law suits in this country with that law in place.
I would suggest going quitely Mr Gaetz and let your lawyers prepare an appeal.
There you go another great republican politician. How about his and his wife’s other little business venture in town that got into trouble.