Someone who I would consider a friend, told me a story yesterday about how his wife threw out her back this past week. He went on to say that he ‘thought of me’ but decided to take her to another friend of his who “owns” a chiropractic office but is not an actual chiropractor himself. At this point, I was just happy he went to see someone although I would have loved the opportunity to help his wife. But the story doesn’t end there unfortunately…
You see, his ‘friend’ told him to come in because he would ‘pay him’ since he had good insurance. Obviously this is insurance fraud and like I told my ‘friend’ is illegal and everyone involved could get in trouble. This didn’t seem to bother him. He used the old adage of “times are tough”. But this activity will end up costing us all. Not only in the obvious way of increasing healthcare costs but in a more inconspicuous way. You see, healthcare offices like mine cannot compete against people doing unscrupulous things like this other ‘friend’. And eventually this leads to practices having to cut corners and decrease expenses in order to compete. When that happens, services and your overall health care begins to decline.
But this mentality won’t change until we all realize that these types of activities are wrong and for a couple bucks today will cost us billions tomorrow. We’ve all heard of Medicare fraud and how rampant it is in South Florida. I remember seeing a recent statistic that 80% of the nation’s Medicare fraud happens in South Florida. That’s a crazy stat but the real scary part is that most of that fraud does not happen without both the scammer AND a willing Medicare recipient. So, think twice the next time you get offered cash for that fender bender you were in or to get paid for a TEN’s unit that you don’t get or need. It will make us all healthier in the long run…
