CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Getnick
Sees Crackdown Coming on Health Care Fraud in New York
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 18, April 26, 2007
White collar defense law firms might want to beef up their health care fraud
practices in New York.
A storm is brewing.
And it’s not looking good for pharmaceutical companies and other health care providers who would seek to rip-off the government.
Governor Eliot Spitzer has just signed into law a False Claims Act modeled after the federal whistleblower law.
He has appointed James Sheehan, one of the nation’s top health care prosecutors, to be the state’s Medicaid Inspector General.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has appointed another former federal prosecutor, Heidi Wendel, to be head of his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
And private attorneys, like Neil Getnick of Getnick & Getnick, are gearing up for a field day against fraud in New York.
It’s still unclear as to who will have primary enforcement authority over the new False Claims Act in New York – Sheehan or Wendel.
But Getnick sees synergies, not rivalries.
“Sheehan has control over significant resources in his new position,” Getnick told Corporate Crime Reporter. “It is still somewhat of an unanswered question as to how the Medicaid Inspector General, a newly created position, will interact with the head of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. We have a proactive Governor. We have a proactive Attorney General. They have joined forces in this fight. And there is every reason to believe that this will be a cooperative effort in which we are talking about synergies, as opposed to rivalries.”
It was Sheehan who led the nationwide effort to crack down on Medicare fraud. Isn’t New York’s gain of Sheehan a loss for the country?
“No,” Getnick says. “Increasingly, Medicaid fraud cases have national significance. New York can now synergize the efforts of health care fraud units all over the country. Increasingly, we are seeing lawsuits where the brand of Medicaid fraud is nationwide. It is not just simply restricted to a given state. We don’t want the first jurisdiction that learns of such a case to be restricted to its own resources. We want to see a situation where local, state and federal resources can be joined together throughout the country to fight these cases. The cases that Jim Sheehan and Heidi Wendel will be fighting in New York will likely have implications far beyond the boundaries of New York State.”
(For a complete transcript of the Interview with Neil Getnick, see 21 Corporate Crime Reporter 18(11), April 30, 2007, print edition only.)
Corporate
Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
202.737.1680