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Corporate execs can run but can?t hide from Medicare fraud penalty under House-passed bill

By Phillips & Cohen LLP

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban corporate executives from doing business with Medicare if their companies engaged in Medicare fraud ? even if they left the companies before the conviction. This would mean they could run, but there would be nowhere to hide.

Right now, executives can move from company to company, leaving behind a trail of Medicare fraud without any consequences to them personally. The Strengthening Medicare Anti-Fraud Measures Act, proposed by Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) and Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA), would allow the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to track down the former executives wherever they work and ban them from doing business with Medicare. This certainly would put a crimp on those executives? employment prospects.

The bill (H.R. 6130) also would smash through shell subsidiaries that corporations often set up in criminal Medicare fraud cases to take a meaningless Medicare ban, which allows the parent corporation to continue to receive Medicare funds despite the fraud conviction. In those circumstances, the bill would give OIG the authority to exclude the parent companies from Medicare.

Full post as published by False Claims Act - Qui Tam on September 23, 2010 (boomark / email).