The New Medicare Scam: Telemedicine Prescriptions

The above was sent to me by another doctor. I left most of it on there but the patient’s info has been scrubbed. How about the line that says “Your patient has given you 4 days to review this request before they use a telemedicine provider?”

This is extortion!!

And what was the request for? Here is what the doc told me:

This is an outfit who solicits patients to get “pharmacogenetic” testing, ostensibly to help the physicians choose drugs and doses–they usually focus on psych drugs.  Many of us really don’t find it all that helpful or accurate and so the uptake among practicing physicians has been underwhelming.  Lately, they have been marketing directly to Medicare patients and sending an “order” to their physician so they can milk Medicare for hundreds if not thousands.  Of course, many doctors like me refuse to sign off on these things–they are a lot like the knee and back braces that the scammers try to get the Medicare crowd to get because, after all, it doesn’t cost the patients anything.  The new twist is the threat to use a telemedicine “provider” who will happily sign off on the order if the physician refuses.  I remain a refusenik.   

Telemedicine is still trending as the new fad in medicine. There have been a lot of good things about it when it is used as an adjunct but the pandemic unleashed a new animal. Remember the old saying: never let a good crisis go to waste. When people were locked up in their homes and doctors were trying to limit the in-person visits to cut down on CV19 transmission, telemedicine was a great opportunity. I applaud that. What we are seeing now is different. 

Big tech equals big money. Big money has a ton of power to lobby and influence legislation. This power corrupts medicine. One example would be Cerebral, a company giving out Adderall like Tic Tacs®. No one saw the patients in person. There were very few doctors involved.

How about Teladoc? Well, Teladoc lost $3 billion in the last three months.  THREE BILLION!!!

I am putting this post out there so you can report this scam to the appropriate authorities for Medicare Fraud. This needs to stop.