Professionals involved in health-care fraud deserve the maximum punishment

Will the punishment fit the verdicts? Will the establishment follow due diligence?

I’m referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent announcement that “more than 400 people have been charged with taking part in health-care fraud and opioid scams that totaled $1.3 billion in false billing.” The group included doctors, nurses and pharmacists. These are all licensed positions allowing licensees the privilege of earning a comfortable living while serving the medically challenged. What do you think the punishment should be for those who knowingly and deliberately put lives at risk for their own monetary gain?

For me, a health-care professional for more than half a century, extreme sentences are the only answers and they must include: mandatory permanent revocation of licenses, mandatory triple monetary damage recovery and mandatory jail time. The facts are that federal and state overseers for compliance and accountability fail time and again to impose the obvious. These people knowingly and deliberately caused injury, social disruption and death.

The $1.3 billion is a lot of money. However, the cost to the American public for Medicare/Medicaid fraud and abuse in 2015 was at least $400 billion based on figures from United Health Insurance and testimony from then Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a physician, on “60 Minutes.”

I would hope that somewhere in the United States investigative reporters will follow the progress of the prosecution and sentencing of these 400 people, and include statistics as to how many new schemes, scams and felons have been uncovered and punished.