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Home News & Case Notes Fraud by health care providers and dishonest employers impact on health insurance costs (5/3/2023) - The Philadelphia Inquirer today reports that health care scams by medical providers, employers and professional criminals are a growing problem. According to the article, large-scale health care fraud that includes “rent-a-patient” schemes and prescription scams can add up to $50 billion to the nation’s already staggering health-care bill. The Inquirer article recounts one fraud case in California where patients around the country were recruited and paid hundreds of dollars to travel to the Los Angeles area to undergo many “out-of-network” procedures. According to the Inquirer article, the doctors and surgery centers would then bill insurers inflated prices (often totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars) that were often paid in full. Another case in the article involved a Pennsylvania businessman who illegally tapped insurance benefits from people who attended the yoga classes he was offering. Fraud investigators uncovered that the businessman, who now faces a 30-month federal prison sentence, submitted false claims for psychiatric care, according to the article. Investigators determined that the psychiatrist had not participated in the fraud. Inquirer article