Private ambulances take Medicare, taxpayers for a ride

[TexasTowelie]

Companies make millions off the poor, vulnerable - whether passengers need services or not

HOUSTON--Early each morning, private ambulances charged toward a leafy Tomball subdivision where, for a hefty price to taxpayers, patients are dispatched to psychiatric "therapy" in a brown brick house where two portable potties are perched in the driveway.

The ambulances are but specks among hundreds of emergency medical vehicles across Harris County making millions of dollars off the poor, the sick and the mentally vulnerable, whether they need a costly EMS lift or not.

Medicare and the American public pay for the ride - dubiously and often - billed to the U.S. government as trips of medical necessity to "clinics" or "hospitals," a Houston Chronicle investigation has found. Much of it fueled by the daily trafficking of the mentally ill and fragile to so-called therapy programs in aging strip malls, mid-rises and residential neighborhoods.

Many of the patients are neither physically debilitated nor confined to a sick bed. They are not headed to, or coming from the hospital, and there is no medical emergency.

More at http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Private-ambulances-take-Medicare-taxpayers-for-a-2220817.php . There are also related articles at the link.

[panzerfaust]

1. Ah, yes. Texas. Home of Republican Family Values Voters

The article has to be read to be believed.

Given Texas's lack of regulation of most anything you can think of, this is predictable. What is less predictable and more difficult to understand is why this fraud is allowed to continue.

The only logical conclusion is that Texas politicians must be involved.


Perhaps even this one.

[ag_dude]

3. You know what, stick the ingorant bigoted bull shit where the sun doesn't shine.

Do you really think Texas is the only place this goes on?

Of course not, you're not an idiot.

But hey, the article came from Texas, let's all drop our pants and take a shit on an entire state.

WOOHOO!!!!

[mucifer]

2. The Obama administration has been going after a lot of medicare fraud.

I wouldn't be surprised if they get taken to court.