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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 2003)
r 13,2| 7A Thursday, November 13, 2003 SCI-TECH THE BATTALION pad [Wheelers and dealers to face fraud charges in scam By Larry Margasak THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — U.S. authorities have aunched 50 separate investigations to stop nscrupulous power wheelchair suppliers from efrauding Medicare and causing anxiety to ben- ficiaries like 85-year-old Euralda Clodomar. Phony claims seeking reimbursement for the ixpensive equipment have skyrocketed to the op of Medicare investigators’ problems. The igency pays 80 percent of a chair’s cost, and its share grew from $22.3 million in 1995 to $663.1 nillion in 2002, already surpassed this year. In many cases, the beneficiaries, including ■Clodomar, had no knowledge that someone stole raraclt M ec ji care identification numbers and sub- ht is expect c i a j mSi Medicare investigators have iden- :ified$167 million in fraudulent claims in more in 20 states, they told The Associated Press. One of those involved Clodomar, who lives in he Los Angeles area and testified against a wheelchair supplier in a federal courtroom here. After she walked unaided from the back of he room and mounted steps to the witness chair, W he prosecutor asked jurors to notice that she its blades, jjdn’t use a wheelchair. ir training' Clodomar doesn’t own a wheelchair, let alone not have ti he motorized model that was charged to them, ft Medicare at a cost of $3,840. “It certainly is the fastest growing scam in Medicare,” said Dara Conigan, acting inspector ;eneral in the Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s about a wheelchair that is very ixpensive and about people trying to make a profit.” The medical equipment industry has market- id its power wheelchairs aggressively, particu- arly in television ads targeting older people. The number of Medicare beneficiaries with at east one claim for a motorized wheelchair rose ram about 55,000 in 1999 to 168,245 in the first nine months of this year. Part of the increase can be explained by mprovements that allow the wheelchairs to turn n a small radius. But an industry group, the Power Mobility Coalition, agrees that some laims result from fraud and is supporting the current government crackdown, “Operation Wheeler Dealer.” ‘If there is fraud, that hurts the good guys because it puts a black eye on everyone,” said Steve Azia, a lawyer for the coalition. So far, Medicare’s crackdown has recovered rtetofflj ^25 million. New suppliers have been banned temporarily from enrolling in the program, urosecutors have been ordered to bring cases quickly and officials are prepared to stop pay- i aboutbeiE ,nents ’ Medical personnel must certify they have seen a patient before prescribing a motor- ixed wheelchair. Investigators are focusing on Florida, Texas, California and Louisiana. They’re also pursuing iccomplisfe' Potential fraud cases in New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Hew York, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, : flameu s simple: Pi tl at fuel is cou ch and tie* if the Eant ness ofspii; isterinthe:: Texas Ai- sofbecdi:: 1950s, he,te xlel rocket' astronauts 1 :e lizard, sot forasuii ig and tecta- h for an ita There is w nd life is (u: is similar« as taken* ilso said it forms, tk hs of works 'list of tap {this m ake this pm:' wanted Df ile and at® da dreamt* : justdreani' fo sometfif ior electric out Fastest growing Medicare scam Medicare costs for power wheelchairs have exploded since 1995, when Medicare's 80 percent share totaled $22.3 million. By 2002, that had escalated to $663.1 million. The government is pursuing 50 investigations of fraud in nearly two-dozen states. Medicare’s payout for power wheelchairs $700 million $663.1 million 200 $22.3 million 100 | '95 '96 97 '98 99 '00 01 '02 NOTE: By law. Medicare can pay 80 percent of the cost of motorized wheelchairs, and this is reflected in the amount. SOURCE: Department of Health and Human Services AP Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Arizona. Investigators say the cases can include: —Equipment company suppliers who submit phony claims. —Doctors who take kickbacks for writing prescriptions. —People who roam shopping malls offering free medical equipment to anyone who’ll sign up for a wheelchair. —Conspirators who stage fake deliveries, complete with pictures of patients who pose with their power chairs for a fee. The part of the cost of a motorized wheel chair beyond Medicare’s 80 percent often is cov ered by other insurance companies. Some sup pliers, investigators said, charged Medicare $5,000 or more for power wheelchairs but pro vided much cheaper motorized scooters. Clodomar and other beneficiaries who testi fied in the Los Angeles case helped persuade a jury to convict Goodwill Sunday Edukere after just 30 minutes of deliberations. Edukere had to return $249,000 and was sentenced to 33 months in prison. Clodomar didn’t know a claim had been sub mitted until federal agents came to see if she had a power wheelchair. She convinced them the same way she convinced jurors. “I walked from the back of the house, where my room is, to the front,” she said in an inter view. “I said, T don’t need one, thank God.’” Elizabeth Bostick, 89, of Ocala, Fla., and her late husband were approached by a saleswoman who represented medical equipment companies. The parent firm billed Medicare $15,500 for two motorized wheelchairs, a hospital bed, a pres sure mattress and other equipment for the cou ple, who said they needed none of it. “They had too much pressure on me,” said Bostick, who was surprised when two red, motorized scooters arrived. “I was wondering how it could have come. I thought a doctor had to give you one,” she said. Corrigan said fraudulent operators often try to scare the elderly. “They’ll say to the beneficiary, ‘You may not need it now, but you know how Medicare is going. Medicare might be out of money in a few years,”’ she said. Plastic memory JRSDAYI technology will rival silicon NED close SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A new memory technology prom ises to store more data at less cost than the expensive-to- build silicon chips used by pop ular consumer gadgets includ ing digital cameras, cell phones and portable music players. The magical ingredient isn’t smaller transistors or an exotic material cooked up by the semiconductor industry. It’s a plastic. Researchers at Princeton University and Hewlett- NEWS IN BRIEF Packard Co.’s HP Labs devel oped the memory, technically a hybrid that contains a plastic film, a flexible foil substrate and some silicon. The findings appear in the journal Nature on Thursday. Unlike flash memory found in consumer devices, the new technology can be written to only once, though it can be read many times. It acts in that respect like a non-rewriteable compact disc. But the new memory, which retains data even when there’s no power, won’t require a power-hungry laser or motor to read or write, and promises more capacity. “For music or photographs, it’s actually an advantage to have something you can’t rewrite,” said Warren Jackson, one of the paper’s co-authors and scientist at HP Labs. “Even in accounting, it would be quite useful if you have a trail of files that you can’t erase.” The goal is to make the technology fast enough to store video. It also could become one of those items people need to keep buying because, once they fill up a card, they’ll need more. Because production would be simpler, costs for con sumers should be lower on a per-megabyte basis than today’s flash memory, researchers said. The Concept Nightclub ,| alurnl)' 15 America The BEST, LARGEST, & only TRUE dance club in B/CS, where we’re always playing only the best of all your hip-hop, techno, & dance favorites!! 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