More Arrests Made in TRICARE Rx Kickback Scheme

[RV_]

I had some compounding pharmacy lotions for pain relief prescribed by my GP and when I saw the bill for 500 bucks for a 12 ounce plastic bottle full hand written I refused any more.

 

It seems some are crossing the legal lines for the millions they can get.

 

Excerpt:

 

"Federal agents last Friday charged 10 more defendants with fraud and conspiracy in a kickback scheme involving compound drugs and TRICARE, the military health insurance program.

 

The alleged conspiracy to market and prescribe exorbitantly priced pain and scar creams of doubtful effectiveness and under false pretenses bilked TRICARE out of $102 million in just 21 months, from May 2014 through February this year. This was just one of many companies that sprang to life recently to make fortunes off of unregulated compound drugs.

 

Defendants here include two physicians – Dr. Walter Neil Simmons, 47, of Mesa, Ariz., and Dr. William F. Elder-Quintana, 50, of El Paso, Texas — as well as owners and marketers of a Dallas-based company called CMGRX.

 

The scheme was to offer kickbacks to physicians and “grants” to hundreds of military and family members at Fort Hood, Texas, to have costly compound drugs prescribed and filled using TRICARE, on the pretext of beneficiaries participating in a sham medical study.

 

An “exhaustive” investigation by the FBI and Defense Criminal Investigative Service led to the recent arrests, atop the first two in February, plus “seizure of millions in assets” defendants had derived from “this massive scheme,” said U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas."

 

More in the article here: http://militaryadvantage.military.com/2016/10/more-arrests-made-in-tricare-rx-kickback-scheme/