Fraud and Florida's multimillion-dollar wheelchair

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - One Miami-area medical equipment supplier managed to bill the U.S. government so often for a wheelchair it ended up costing $5 million.

Last year south Florida accounted for 80 percent of the drugs billed across the entire United States for Medicare beneficiaries with HIV/AIDS, even though the region only had about one in 10 of eligible HIV/AIDS patients.

Fraud against Medicare, the federal health insurer for America's 43 million elderly and disabled, has become so prevalent that it may rival the illegal drug trade as a crime of choice in a state long renowned for cocaine cartels, political shenanigans and swampland real estate scams.

In one case, said Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, a company had billed Medicare for millions of dollars worth of specially formulated asthma medication prepared at what the owner claimed to be his own local pharmacy.

"The person wasn't a pharmacist, he was an air conditioner repairman. When we raided the so-called pharmacy where he mixed all these aerosols it was nothing more than a broom closet where all we found was a can of tar," Acosta told Reuters.

Fraud targeting health-care programs for seniors is not unique to south Florida, where many elderly Americans have retired to end their days in the sunshine.

But the authorities say it's become a huge and growing industry here.

"If you're a criminal and your sole goal is to make money, health-care fraud looks increasingly attractive," said Acosta.