Gilbert Cranberg: A FITTING WAY TO FILL PRISON BEDS

Health Management Associates, a leading for-profit health-care company, has a great idea for boosting business. The company posts color-coded scorecards near the emergency rooms the outfit operates identifying how well physicians score in admitting patients to the hospital. The object is to admit at least half of the patients over 65. Physicians who hit the target are rewarded with green cards.

I have a better idea: start jailing the for-profit health-care executives who improperly gouge the government. The score cards then would record and tick off, for all to see, each day the guilty executive spends in jail.

The usual penalty for health-care cheating is a fine. That punishes stockholders, not the persons responsible for the cheating, who quite possibly were rewarded with bonuses.

Wikipedia reports that in settlements reached in 2000 and 2002, Columbia/HCA pled guilty to 14 felonies and agreed to a fine of over $600 million in the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history. “Columbia/HCA admitted systematically overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable, by striking illegal deals with home care agencies, and by filing false data about use of hospital space. They also admitted fraudulently billing Medicare and other health programs by inflating the seriousness of diagnoses and to giving doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors referring patients to HCA. They filed false cost reports, fraudulently billing Medicare for home health care workers, and paid kickbacks in the sale of home health agencies and to doctors to refer patients. In addition, they gave doctors ‘loans’ never intending to be repaid, free rent, free office furniture, and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.”

Some of this surely should have been worth jail time. Instead, the CEO on whose watch most of this occurred left with a fat compensation package that enabled him to run successfully for governor of Florida.

I know a kid who stupidly drove a car for his cousins to rob a convenience store and received a mandatory seven-year prison term. It was his first offense. He should have known better. The white collar types who rob do know better; they know that the chances are slim that they will ever see the inside of a jail cell. If those odds improved, it would not only help even the scales of justice, it would be poetic justice for health care executives who cut corners to fill hospital beds filled prison beds for a change.