OK. This is just crazy.
Two Florida businessman, Charlie RX and Happy Trips, were busted for bilking Medicare for illegal penis pumps and vacuum erection systems to aid female patients battle erectile dysfunction(?)
The Miami Herald reported:
It’s one thing that a pair of Hialeah companies were fraudulently billing Medicare for penis pumps at $395 a pop to supposedly help male patients combat impotence.
It’s quite another that Charlie RX and Happy Trips also billed the federal healthcare program for vacuum erection systems to aid female patients battle erectile dysfunction, authorities say.
And what’s even more remarkable: Medicare paid the two medical equipment providers $28,600 after they submitted a total of $63,000 in false claims for the erection pumps, according to charges unsealed Monday in federal court in Miami.
The criminal case highlights, yet again, Medicare’s chronic problem of paying bills quickly without first verifying them — a glaring flaw that has undermined the taxpayer-funded system during the past decade.
Emilio Felipe Lopez, 47, president of Charlie RX, and Orlando Hernandez Estevez, 25, president of Happy Trips, were indicted on charges of healthcare fraud in February. Last week, FBI agents arrested the two Hialeah businessmen, who authorities say were in hiding. They have their first appearances in Miami federal court Monday afternoon.
Both defendants are accused of stealing Medicare patients’ numbers and doctors’ identifications to submit nearly $2 million in bogus bills to the healthcare program for the elderly and disabled between October and February.
The bigger they are the harder they fall.
