April 02, 2012
In a recent Forbes blog post, Phillips & Cohen attorney Erika Kelton tells of students who did an off-the-cuff cost/benefit analysis of Medicaid fraud and decided it might be a good way to get rich quick.
Deterring corporate fraud can be particularly challenging. Excluding a pharmaceutical company from participating in Medicare and Medicaid may be impossible: beneficiaries need those drugs. Holding individual corporate officers criminally liable has been difficult for prosecutors who can’t always prove intent.
Kelton suggests increasing the cost relative to the benefit. Tailoring exclusion to a particular company division and using clawbacks to recoup executive bonuses linked to fraudulent practices could make fraud less attractive.