County Cracks Down on Health-Care Scammers
Dallas County is going after people who lie about income to get free care.
Aug. 15, 2007 — -- An estimated 47 million Americans currently have no health insurance and many simply can't afford the care they need.
Equally infuriating is news of a recent health-insurance scam in which Americans with plenty of money are cheating the system and making all of us pay for it.
A motel owner, a restaurateur and the proprietor of an air-conditioning company are among a group of people who bilked Dallas County, Texas, of $25 million by claiming they didn't have enough money to pay for health care.
"All of these individuals were well within their means to pay for their health care, [but] they chose to lie on their applications," said Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins.
All three defrauders went to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas to receive care, pretended to be indigent and stuck Dallas County for hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, according to the district attorney.
Byron Harris, a reporter at ABC News' Dallas affiliate WFAA, confronted one man, who pleaded guilty to filing false documents. The man said, "I have money now."
Another couple who admitted to lying are now paying back $46,000 in medical costs.
Dallas Country has prosecuted 16 cases of insurance fraud and has 190 more cases pending — an indication of the potentially huge problem nationwide. Parkland Memorial Hospital now has a software system in place to screen people and weed out people lying about their financial status.
Fed Up With Insurance Companies?
The government says fraud amounts to 10 percent of all health-care expenditures in the United States.
"When people steal like this, it is costing you, it is costing me, it is costing taxpayers," said Dennis Jay, executive director of a group called Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.
As egregious as that sounds, it might be the latest example of how frustrated Americans are with the health-care system and insurance companies. One in four people believe it is justifiable to defraud insurance companies, according to a 2003 survey conducted by the consulting firm Accenture Ltd.
"The people who are really hurt by this are the people who deserve the care the most, and that would be the indigent," said Bob Reed, the director of patient financial services at the hospital.