Researching The Quality of Your Medical Care

“The AMA strongly believes patients should have access to reliable information about physicians, and state regulatory agencies are best positioned to offer well-balanced information to help patients make informed decisions about physicians,” an AMA spokesperson said in a statement. Trial lawyers shouldn’t be the only ones with access to relevant information about the background of […]

The Battle of Evermore: How the Insurance Lobby Rules Florida

The end of the year brings legislative sessions to a close, setting up final face-offs between special interests affected by pending legislation. Back in the Spring, I wrote in separate posts about a long hoped-for consumer win in Florida to change unfair wrongful death laws: Turns out, politics isn’t the only place where misinformation is […]

Victims of Malpractice Don’t Lose Their Patient Rights.

I know – for a fact – that this happens waaay too often. Sometimes, the physicians and trial lawyers share an interest in patient safety that is contrary to the interests of the doctor’s insurance carrier. “Protecting patient and physician confidentiality must be a paramount concern of medical malpractice carriers. What Coverys has done in […]

“CVS Health intentionally prevented certain Medicare beneficiaries from accessing less expensive, generic prescriptions…”

The Forbes report is here: Report: Whistleblower accuses CVS of “calculated and widespread” drug pricing scheme targeting elderly patients

Disinformation: How To Manufacture A “Crisis” & Tort Reform To Solve It

Turns out, politics isn’t the only place where misinformation is used to ply the soil that grows bad ideas. In the 1980’s, health care providers and insurance carriers deliberately and falsely yelled that the sky was falling due to negligence claims and payouts. Their solution? Caps on damages in the most righteous and significant cases. […]

On Top Of Locking Many Brain Damaged Children Out Of Court, Florida Begins Gaslighting Them

In the late 1980s, the Florida legislature set up a regulatory scheme to immunize doctors and hospitals by locking Florida courthouse doors to the families of some children who suffer severe brain damage during birth. All government programs get an acronym and the acronym for this burden-shifting agency is NICA (The Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury […]

What To Expect When You Come Between The Fortune 500 and Their Bottom Line

Marketing can cover a lot of warts. Meanwhile, in the real world, people behave in line with our experience and the incentives put in front of them, even where it conflicts with what we know to be right and wrong. From the NYT, Mr. Williams said a State Farm claims adjuster told him that she […]

Kaiser Permanante Has It All Wrong

“They insist that you go through an advice nurse as opposed to just calling the doctor directly to set up an appointment, which was what I was trying to do,” Flach said. “You should have the option of calling your own doctor.” Kaiser doesn’t just get between you and your doctor. They also get between […]

Shkreli’s Quality Fraud (is not a one-off)

This legal concept is used by the Department of Justice to recover lost, wasted, or stolen money in the health care market. In 2016, I blogged about it in the context of prescription drug costs right here. I was watching a Netflix show last night and Martin Shkreli (played by an actor) made an appearance […]

Sentencing in $250M Radiology Fraud Scheme

If you follow the Department of Justice alerts, you know that the Feds recover hundreds of millions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse in our health insurance system every year. Why is this considered acceptable? #QualityFraud Ex-CEO of medical imaging companies sentenced to prison in $250 million fraud scheme