2021 has been full of hurdles for patients and providers alike with the continuing struggle to get back on track since things are finally opening up. However, there is an even larger unseen hurdle no one knows much about.

The US Department of Justice is set to collect well over $3 billion dollars this year alone due to healthcare fraud under the False Claims Act (FCA). This explosive figure is due to in part of uncollected monies from 2020 but also from devices from medical & pharmaceutical companies, labs & pharmacies and also healthcare providers found guilty of fraud.

This is just the Federal Government number and non-inclusive to what the individual states would be. If the state numbers were included, then the number would be much higher due to Medicaid and other programs. In fact, the DOJ is set to recover a whopping $2.8 billion settlement from Purdue Pharma (last October 2020 Perdue made national headlines with the largest penalties ever levied against a pharmaceutical company: criminal fine of $3.5 billion, $2 billion in criminal forfeiture, 3 counts felony, and a settlement of $2.8 billion), $225 million from Sackler and finally a $600 million from Indivior due to their false advertising and information regarding Suboxone.

Even with these monumental recoveries, there is still a lot of progress to be made to ensure stunts like these are reduced significantly.

Posted in 2021 News