Congress To Go After Medicaid Fraud, Why Not Fraud Against Patients Too?

The Wall Street Journal noted yesterday that Congress is planning to take steps to wipe out the estimated $60 billion a year in Medicaid fraud.

"'The scale of health care fraud in America today is staggering,' Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) said at a hearing. 'Now, as health care reform moves through the Senate, I want to make sure we do all we can to tackle the fraud that could undermine efforts to reduce the skyrocketing cost of health care.'"

That's all well and good and I wish Congress luck. A good amount of the fraudulent behavior comes from our friends at America's Pharmaceutical Research Companies (see Lilly, Pfizer, BMS, etc.). All of the billions in awards the feds have gotten out of these companies for ripping off taxpayers has also come at the expense of individual Americans who, in many cases, never get compensated and never get the satisfaction of watching a Lilly exec, say, do a perp walk. Meanwhile, their bodies are ravaged.

Congress ought to be interested in beefing up consumer protections regarding pharmaceuticals and also in creating penalties that really matter instead of the situation we have now where pharma basically pays off the feds through its liability insurance. The system of laws and regulations in place now is apparently not sufficient to protect Americans against another Zyprexa or Byetta.