California’s $2 billion medical fraud shame hid in plain sight — all we had to do was look

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It’s amazing how deep the rot goes when someone decides to find it and get rid of it.

Federal investigators swooped in Thursday on a massive $2 billion medical fraud ring. Some of the crimes the suspects are alleged to have committed are shocking.

Two are accused of swindling patients into believing that they had arterial disease, then conducting unnecessary surgery and billing Medicare to the tune of $134 million.

One even lured patients into the scheme by offering groceries and $50 gift cards to poor people.

They exploited the most vulnerable — so they could live large on taxpayers’ money.

Other suspects are accused of luring addicts, including homeless people, to drug treatment programs that provided no help to them but billed insurance companies for the cost of rehab.

There were dozens of so-called rehab centers allegedly involved in the scheme. Sometimes, the “body brokers” who trafficked these addicts across the country would offer them drugs to participate.

These scams are part of the reason the homeless population grew over the past several years in California. When the insurance money for rehab runs out, the scam artists just abandon the addicts to their fates, and to the streets of LA.

Others were charged with hospice fraud and a variety of other fake medical schemes. Kickbacks for genetic testing; fake pharmacy prescriptions, and more.

These aren’t victimless crimes. Some people who had unnecessary surgery allegedly suffered severe injuries.

Some people — especially addicts — who needed real medical treatment never received it.

And the taxpayers were stuck with the bill, pouring payroll taxes into a bottomless pit of corruption and greed.

It’s absolutely appalling that this was allowed to go on in California for so long. And people knew that something was wrong — that the phony rehab centers were luring clients to the state, for example. 

Yet too many so-called leaders in California turned a blind eye. It took an energetic federal prosecutor, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, to take the problem seriously.

It turns out there’s so much fraud in California that Essayli doesn’t need a flashlight to find it. He can use a floodlight.

It’s everywhere. And it’s been tolerated because of a culture of complacency.

When there is political will to find the fraud, it turns out to be easy.

It’s no wonder Democrats silenced Essayli in Sacramento.

And no wonder President Donald Trump wanted him in the prosecutor’s office.

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