California AG Files Fraud Charges Against 39

California AG Files Fraud Charges Against 39 pharmaceutical companies

There is big Medical billing news in California. California’s Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, is showing large pharmaceutical companies that they can’t take advantage of his state any longer. Pharmaceutical fraud has plagued California. Inflation of medical billing hurts everyone.

On August 25, the medical billing news that swept across California was that the Attorney General filed a lawsuit against 39 large pharmaceutical companies. He claims that they have spent years wrongfully inflating the costs of drugs. The billings for many of these medical drugs were sent to California’s Medicaid (Medi-Cal).

Apparently, a smaller pharmacy filed a lawsuit against a few larger drug companies claiming they supplied wrong pricing information. This led the Attorney General to do a little digging into all of the pharmaceutical medical billing. What he found was shocking. He found that there was extreme price inflation of these drugs from dozens of major pharmacies and decided to add many more large pharmacies to the lawsuit.

Inflation of these pharmaceutical drugs hurts everyone. In this case, when the patients sent Medi-Cal an inflated billing for their medical drugs, that meant the state tax payers paid unnecessary extra money for their drugs. If taxpayers unnecessarily pay money towards drugs then there won’t be enough money when medical billing occurs for real medical problems. It is a downward spiral. The more tax money that is paid, the less disposable income is available. The less disposable income that is available, the economy begins to decline. When the economy declines, everyone loses.

Fraud is something that should not be tolerated in medical billing. The lawsuit against the 39 pharmaceutical companies in California warns other offenders that they too will be caught. Medical billing should only be handled by honest professionals.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P