Defense: Doc's $100 million Medicare fraud cost just $64,000
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A politically connected Florida eye doctor convicted of a $100 million Medicare fraud actually cost the government just $64,000 in illegitimate payments, his defenders argued Thursday in an effort to drastically reduce his potential sentence.
Dr. Salomon Melgen's lawyers portrayed him as ahead of his time, injecting patients with then-experimental drugs that are now approved. Medicare does not pay for experimental treatments, so attorney Josh Sheptow suggested that Melgen may have falsified billing statements to get around those restrictions.
That would still be fraud, but Sheptow said the treatments were legitimate, so the government didn't lose anything with many of his patients.