Research Catalog

Title

Prescription for profit : how doctors defraud Medicaid / Paul Jesilow, Henry N. Pontell, and Gilbert Geis.

Author

Jesilow, Paul, 1950-

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, ©1993.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Pontell, Henry N., 1950-
• Geis, Gilbert.

Description

xi, 247 pages; 24 cm

Summary

In this explosive expose 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. <p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p> "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. </p><p>

Subject

• Medicaid
• Medicaid fraud
• Physicians > Malpractice > United States
• Fraud
• Physicians
• Fraud
• Medicaid
• Physicians
• Insurance Claim Reporting
• fraud
• physicians
• Medicaid fraud
• Physicians > Malpractice
• Ärztliche Leistung
• Abrechnung
• Betrug
• Physicians > Malpractice > United States
• United States

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

Professional Entrepreneurs -- Medicaid and Medicaid Fraud -- The Law in Action: Enforcement in the Medicaid Program -- What the Doctors Did -- Doctors Tell Their Stories -- Conclusions and Speculations.

ISBN

• 0520076141
• 9780520076143

LCCN

91036944

OCLC

• ocm25164390
• 25164390
• SCSB-1983922

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library